


the Tale of Four Kingdoms

by misdre



Category: Bakuten Shoot Beyblade, Beyblade
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Gen, M/M, POV First Person, POV Multiple, Worldbuilding, so slow burn it's gonna take forever to get anywhere
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2019-06-11 23:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 83,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15327213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misdre/pseuds/misdre
Summary: A story about Takao, Kai, Rei, and Max being the four kings of a fantasy universe divided into four different kingdoms, named after cardinal directions. Each young and troubled in his own way, the four get to know each other little by little, and delve deep into the secrets of the four kingdoms and their relations as they do... and form some secrets of their own as well.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> this is a fic that i've been working on for a very, very, very, very long time, and it's still unfinished as of now and i have rewritten the beginning parts many many times, but now i decided to just finally let it go and at least post the first few chapters that i'm content with. (thank you to the lovely paperclippedmime for beta-reading them!!)
> 
> the fantasy universe of this fic has expanded crazily since i began writing this (first as a oneshot that's in my AU junkyard), and frankly i don't know how enjoyable it can be if you're just here to casually read fics about spinning tops, but it would be my greatest honour if someone out there fell in love with it anyways. this isn't a very action-packed story - it's about the world i've created, the boys' introspection, drama, politics, unsolved mysteries that keep piling up as the story progresses, and rising suspense.
> 
> my main inspiration for this fic is the twelve kingdoms/juuni kokuki series which i love to bits. it kind of shows.

A long, long time ago, in a time and space so distant that ordinary humans have never even heard of it, there existed a world created by four celestial beings called the holy beasts. This world was divided into four lands, each the creation of one of the four beasts.

Seiryuu, the Azure Dragon, created a land of spring, the Country of East. The East was the land of year-round greenery under a bright blue sky, covered in forests and meadows, home of numerous exquisite flora that flourished in the mellow Eastern climate. The people of the East were particularly proud of their cherry blossom trees, which had become the very symbol of their nation.

Suzaku, the Vermilion Bird, created a land of summer, the Country of South. By area, the South was the largest of the four countries; by temperature, it was the warmest. Vast masses of the Southern land were deserts of the finest red sand, and the same sand framed the land’s coastlines, forming long, beautiful beaches that expanded as far as the eye could see. As a symbol of its fiery powers, it gave rise to four volcanoes, each for one corner of the country.

Byakko, the White Tiger, created a land of autumn, the Country of West. Created by the prankster of the quartet, the West rarely saw a day of clear sky; it was the land of misty haze,  drizzly rain and cloudy horizons. To balance out the muddy climate, all of the Western flora came in the brilliant hues of autumn, ranging from golden yellow to musky purple; and the soil was rich with minerals of all kinds, granting the country great innate wealth.

And Genbu, the Black Tortoise, created a land of winter, the Country of North. Most of this peculiar country was covered by a permanent blanket of frost and snow, but it also had an abundance of rivers, streams and lakes; and no matter how low the temperature dropped, the water never froze over. Void of sunlight, the Northern sky borrowed its light from the stars and the Moon, and sometimes the colourful veil of Northern lights.

After creating the four lands, the holy beasts created people to inhabit them. Because the beasts were celestial beings and couldn't but guard people and the world they lived in from far above, they needed human vessels to lead the four nations. Thus they created four kings who would rule over other people using the four beast’s powers. The four kings were neither human nor gods, but something between – they were messengers, or icons, of the four holy beasts. To protect their vulnerable human vessels, the divine beasts created lesser beings that mirrored themselves, a range of holy beasts that anyone capable of serving the kings could summon.

Although created equal in the beginning of the world, the four kingdoms inevitably grew apart over time; their inhabitants forgot their origins and connection to each other, and they all shaped their own independent, unique societies. But the four royal bloodlines remained, and mysteriously enough, with each new generation that the crowns were passed down to, the holy beasts' magic only grew stronger within the four kings. It was up to the individual nations and their flow of history, however, to define the line between humanity and divinity.

An ambiguous number of centuries after the holy beasts once created the land, there came a time when each of the four crowns were to be passed to unusually young heirs. Perhaps this was all an act of ill omen befalling the four kingdoms – as the world created by the holy beasts was about to come to its end.


	2. Seiryuu-ou I

One step backwards, one step sideways, lunge... and strike! Beat!

A lash of wood hitting wood echoed on the stone walls as Ralf dropped his sword, overpowered by yet another direct hit from his master – me, that is. He took off his helmet and gave me a dutiful bow. Just another pointless gesture that he carried out like his life depended on it. What a sad life it had to be, I found myself thinking, and not for the first time that day.

“I have been defeated once again, Your Highness. Another excellent Beat, well done.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I uttered impatiently, waving my own wooden practice-sword at his bumpy nose, “I know, I'm just too good and all that. I've really had enough for today, or actually for the rest of my life if you ask me, but nobody ever does.”

I was made to do this pointless fencing practice with Ralf three times a week. As for the reason why I considered it pointless, Ralf was just too goddamn weak. He used to be a tough opponent once – like, two or three years ago. I had surpassed him by far already, and I swear, there was nothing as aggravating as not having a worthwhile opponent to fight.

“We may give it a rest for today,” Ralf yielded, picking his sword off the floor. He hardly ever expressed emotion other than gravity or annoyance on his face – another factor that made me question the quality of the poor guy's life, honestly – but I did think I caught a glimpse of something a tad apologetic this time. “You may be thinking otherwise, but I am aware of how strong you have grown, Your Highness. But, mind you, I  _ am  _ the third strongest fencer in the East after your and His Majesty. I'm afraid there is very little we can do.”

I let out a discontent grunt while handing my helmet over to Ralf, who then carried on to remove the rest of my armour. He was right, obviously, as proved by several of the annual fencing tournaments held every Summermoon. Being the strongest sure sounded grand, but it got old pretty fast. It was hard to find any motivation to keep going when the greatest achievement of my fencing career had been beating my own Gramps once, and he’s a fossil anyway, or like spoiled, soggy noodles, way past his prime as a former king and fencing champion, so the victory didn't taste all that sweet. I’d been telling Gramps for almost a year now that I finally wanted to switch to real sword fighting, but no, he just wasn't having any of it; he kept saying I had to come of age before I was allowed to do as much as touch a real sword, made of metal instead of bamboo or wood. What total bullshit. The geezer kept hogging the family heirloom sword all to himself, but I was well aware it actually belonged to  _ me _ . I was the king, and it was mine! Why couldn't I at least have it in my own room?!

“You're stronger at sword fighting than fencing, right?” I asked Ralf once he was done putting the equipment away.

“Obviously, Your Highness,” he said, “I am strong enough to protect you from any harm.”

“Then having a go with swords would be more fun to you too, wouldn't it??”

“I do not point my sword at anyone for 'fun', Your Highness.”

Ralf was the kind of guy who must have been a riot in parties. Not that he ever attended any, I pondered as I left the old, muggy training hall. Fencing was alright, but even that stone hall was so dull, whenever I set my foot inside I felt like a part of me just died of boredom. I knew I had what it took to be able to wield a real sword. I wasn't a child anymore, but Gramps seemed to treat me as one.

Fuming, I steered my footsteps in the opposite direction from the castle grounds and, telling Ralf I was in a bad mood and needed fresh air, instead descended the long row of stone steps down the hill and headed through the gates towards the town. As always, Ralf was a little hesitant to leave me on my own, and while I didn't blame him, as it literally was his job as my knight to guard my back, there had never been a single occasion in my life where I would have needed the protection of his sword. Not even once.

My go-to place downtown was my friend Professor’s house, which was also a small family-owned restaurant. Their noodles were just the best, and the place was reasonably small for my liking, located in a nice little block with enough cover for me to drop by without attracting  _ too  _ much attention. Not that I disliked attention, I actually loved greeting the townspeople and exchanging a word or a few with them, but it was when they started getting too formal or asking about Gramps or tried discussing whatever the latest fuss was that I decided to rather make my escape. That’s why I didn’t mind the narrow alley that I used for sneaking into Professor’s house. I climbed the steep wooden staircase and slipped in through the unlocked backdoor of the Saien household.

As usual, Professor was at home – where would he ever go, when he had everything he needed in his own room? It was cluttered with books and tools and boxes filled to the brim with... stuff, I didn't really know what most of it was, but trinkets of all sorts anyway. 'Professor' wasn't his real name, of course, it was a nickname he had gained thanks to his passion for science and all kind of machinery. Professor was definitely one of those people who had a compulsive need to know how the world around them worked. His newest achievement was building his own telescope, and he hoped to one day view the stars up close, or something like that. He was in the middle of fiddling with the telescope when I poked my head through his door and gave it a belated knock.

“Professooor! Hi there!”

“Hello, Takao!” he greeted chipperly, adjusting his big, round glasses. “You arrived at the perfect time, I was just about to take a break.”

We headed downstairs in the rather cramped apartment and moved over to a quiet table at the back of the restaurant that was located on the ground floor. It was the only table so far back and regular customers couldn’t see over there, so it was the perfect spot for enjoying a glass of soda in peace – and, apparently, a plateful of the most expensive items from the menu. I had long ago given up on trying to tell Professor's parents not to pamper me with their food. I would have wanted to pay for it like a proper customer and all, but there were some things you just couldn't help as the king. Well, I had nothing against good food, but at least I tried, you know.

“I truly do not know how she's still not used to you,” Professor said once his fidgety but zestful mother had left the scene, praising how honoured she was to have me over and apologising for “her son’s usual rudeness” (I think she referred to his chill attitude towards me), leaving the food behind on our table. “You would think it's been long enough by now.”

“I don't think I mind,” I said cheerfully, grabbing a pair of chopsticks so I could dig right in.

While eating, I complained to Professor about the fencing practice, and about Ralf being so boring, and how I really just wanted to start sword fighting already. It was nothing that Professor hadn't already heard before; my life at the time was pretty uneventful. Small everyday inconveniences like this became the main topic of my conversations with other people. Life was so simple back then.

“Hmm,” Professor, chewing at his straw, hummed once I was done complaining. “But you know... If you only ever practice against Sir Ralf and His Majesty, how do you  _ know _ whether you are the strongest fencer in the East? The  _ entire  _ East? And what about the other countries? I'm sure there has to be people out there whom you could compete against.”

“Is fencing popular elsewhere?” I asked – although it came out as more of an “If fenfing phophular elfewhere?” with my mouth full of food.

“That I do not know,” Professor admitted. “My knowledge of foreign sports is still rather lacking.”

It was nevertheless a tempting suggestion. I hadn't travelled around much, mainly because I was constantly under my Gramps' watchful eye. Who knew how much there was to see out there? It would be a blatant lie to say that I’d had much interest in the world outside my immediate view during my life so far – or, should I say it wasn't a matter of whether I had interest or not, but I just didn't really think about complicated stuff like that. I guess I was what you'd call a simpleton, or had what you’d call a one track mind; history and stuff like that had never been a subject that interested me. I lived my life one day at a time, focused on the present, and this life of mine very much revolved around things right in front of me. And that mostly meant the Cherrywood Castle, and Tsuno, the city it was located in – the capital of my kingdom, the Country of East.

Of course, I knew what the rest of the world was  _ like _ . I did know a thing or two about other countries, and knew that they had kings like me, too. Not that this king business meant much to me. Frankly, I didn't really know what it meant to be a king. I was still underage, so while I had already inherited the crown, I wasn’t allowed to wear it before my coronation once I’d turn eighteen. So my Gramps was the one handling all the difficult stuff, and the crown currently served as nothing more than paperweight. I wrote my name on some things, and put stamp-marks on some other things, and sometimes showed my face somewhere, but that was about it for my contribution. I felt like more of a mascot for the royal family than anything. Gramps was always saying that I needed to learn to be more responsible before I could really participate in governing the kingdom, but what did that even mean, “learning to be responsible”? And how would I ever achieve that when I wasn't allowed to do anything? All Gramps wanted me to do was practice fencing and self-discipline and waking up earlier. He was also kinda hell-bent on Ralf always staying by my side, so I didn't ever tell him I visited Professor without Ralf. It was just really awkward to hang out with a friend when there was a Spartan-looking guy looming over your shoulder, you know?

Not that I blamed Gramps for being so cautious with me. I was the only family he had left. My parents were long gone, deceased so long ago that I wouldn’t have remembered their faces anymore if it wasn’t for old portraits scattered around the castle. I had an older brother, but he had chickened out right when he was supposed to be legally crowned as Seiryuu-ou and had run away the day he came of age, which was how I ended up becoming the king while still a minor, though in name only. I had no idea where my brother had gone; there was this strange atmosphere around the topic at home, as if Gramps was avoiding talking about him and our family in general. I’d learnt not to ask about it much. I was told that my parents died in an accident while they’d been travelling to another country, but never any details about it, so I had only assumed it was something exceptionally gruesome and not suitable for my young ears. I’d been dead curious about it for a while back in the days, but somehow the reason behind it lost its importance with time. They were gone, that's all there was to it. Whether I knew how it happened didn't make a difference, it wouldn't bring them back. It also made sense that Gramps wanted to have a very dedicated knight keeping me away from harm, so there wouldn't be any more fatal accidents in the family. Not that I could imagine what such an accident might be.

My brother though, he was a whole different story. I had been eight years old when Hitoshi fled the castle, so I still remembered him well: he was an honest, bold person that I’d always looked up to as the very icon of a future king. It didn't make sense to me how he decided to avoid that responsibility in the end, abandoning me and my Gramps for life. He’d been a good brother, and taught me to always be true to myself and to follow my passions and do my best, so it was more than a little fishy that he blatantly acted against his own virtue by leaving his family behind. I never saw him again. I didn't even know where he'd gone, or where he was now. And Gramps had never wanted to talk about it, apart from saying that Hitoshi was “exploring the world”. I knew that he’d had a special interest in archaeology, so I guessed he chose to pursue that passion over his responsibilities after all, and that it was considered shameful so we weren’t supposed to talk about it, or something. Gramps had sometimes worded his wishes for Hitoshi to drop by to at least say hi, but that hadn’t ever happened. Short on real answers, I had concluded that the reason why Gramps didn't want to talk about him was to avoid giving me any ideas of going after him. Maybe Ralf was also assigned to keep an eye on me in that regard. It made decent sense, but the older I got, the more I really wanted to know what Hitoshi had been thinking when he left us. When he left  _ me _ .

What I'm trying to say with all this is, I hadn't actually been outside the capital mansion of my country. Or I had, a few times, but it was all so carefully planned and all we ever did was drop at some big shot nobles’ houses and, you know how travelling is like when you’re small, you just don’t really give a rat’s butt about it. It wasn't really my concern most of the time, but when I had conversations like this with Professor, whom I’d befriended a couple years back, I realised that it  _ was  _ a bit strange for a king to not know much about his own kingdom. My subjects throughout the country probably knew everything about  _ me _ . It was such a curious thought, and a bit disturbing. Is this what a king was supposed to be like? A mascot in his castle?

“Sometimes,” I then began after a long, thoughtful pause, “I kinda feel like I wanna know more about stuff.”

“I can help you do some inquiry on the spread of fencing in the world,” Professor proposed.

I shook my head vigorously, dropping my chopsticks. “That's not what I mean! I mean, not just fencing, but everything! Who cares about fencing anyway – I wanna wield a real sword. And maybe... like... go on an adventure?”

Professor brought a hand to his chin. “An adventure, you say?”

That was when the door of the restaurant was opened, accompanied with a cheerful chime of the bell that hung above it, then followed by the sound of heavy footsteps and surprised gasps from other customers. And then Ralf appeared by our table. Even if I didn't take him along when I went out, he knew perfectly well where to find me at most times. It was so annoying. So annoyingly convenient.

“Your Highness, we received a message concerning the details of the royal conference,” Ralf informed us, standing there like a soldier on duty while people stared at him. “From the Country of North.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- The four kingdoms are all based on real countries, but this is fantasy so they’re not even meant to be 100% accurate and are more like a mishmash of a few different countries. So East isn't even supposed to perfectly represent Japan and such, even if it's mostly based on it.  
> \- The “fencing” that’s done in the Country of East is a mixture of kendo, European fencing, and just my imagination. The gear is similar to kendo but it’s a combat sport like fencing.  
> \- “Mansions” are geographical territories and each country has seven of them. They’re just literally based on the seven mansions a.k.a positions of the moon of the four Chinese constellations that the holy beasts are derived from.


	3. Byakko-ou I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Months have different names, and are called moons. Earthenmoon, which is where the story starts from, is March. (The Moon in the sky is always with capital M to make the difference.)  
> \- Because cardinal directions mean the countries’ names, geographical directions are given in left, right, up and down instead.

The highest floor of the Tiger Maple Palace’s tower was my favourite place to waste time at on the palace grounds. This spot was the closest to the sky, closest to freedom. It wasn’t unusual for me to spend a whole hour on the balcony, observing the scenery that spread in every direction beneath me, both the skyscraper-filled Tianguan cityscape some distance away and the small figures of people going about their daily tasks inside the palace walls. Where the white sky blended into veils of smoke from the chimneys in the distance, the horizon was a blur of hues of dirty metal. This wall of grey hid the faraway mountain range from view almost entirely. In the opposite direction, somewhere beyond the upper horizon was the ocean that I had never seen with my own eyes.

However, that particular afternoon I was disregarding the horizon and focused on the people instead. Following everyone's more or less mundane activities brought me peace of mind, a sense of pleasant laziness. I enjoyed moments like this as the rare breaks from the shackles of being the king. Up here, at the top of the palace tower, nobody was expecting anything from me. It felt quite nice indeed, even while it was rather cold up there, on that quiet, chilly day of early Earthenmoon.

In the palace garden, servants scurried about like ants, making preparations for warmer moons that lay in the near future. And I saw Mao sitting at her usual spot in the garden, lovingly brushing the spotted fur of Galux, her wildcat-shaped holy beast companion. I was pretty sure that she had been brushing it for at least thirty minutes now, and I had to wonder whether Galux's fur really was that tangled or if she just kept doing it for no real reason. Probably the latter.

As I was looking at her, Mao suddenly lifted her eyes from the beast and returned my look, as if she had realised that she was being watched (which was possible, as she knew of my habit of climbing to the tower, although it was still impressive of her to see all the way up here). She smiled and waved her hand at me. I replied with a half-hearted wave of my own – it felt like such a silly gesture when we had been talking to each other just a couple of hours earlier that day. She’d been staying at Tiger Maple recently, despite not actually living on the palace grounds.

There was something curious about the sight of Mao holding the majestic beast on her lap, as if it were nothing but an ordinary pet. I had very little experience with animals myself, but witnessing other people treat their holy beasts in such a manner did make me feel something akin to envy. As the Byakko-ou, I possessed the ability to summon Byakko, one of the great holy beasts who, according to legend anyway, were the guardians and creators of the entire universe – but, _also_ as the Byakko-ou, I was not allowed to do so. Holy beasts were the symbol of nobility, but the king alone was not allowed to summon his at will. As a divine beast, Byakko was a sacred figure and “not to be called out in any occasion outside the sacred rituals”, as the age-old guideline apparently said. Otherwise, I myself acted as the embodiment of Byakko. Whatever that meant, as I wasn’t entirely sure myself.

As I stared at Galux's content expression, I couldn't not wonder whether Byakko would also have preferred to be petted like a lap cat instead of staying sealed away without a physical form. I shook my head shortly after, however, as if to shed such incredulous thoughts. Byakko must have been enormous in size compared to a lesser beast like Galux, and humouring myself with such ideas about the divine beast was stupid to begin with.

After a while, something caught Mao's attention. Now she was talking to someone. Then, she raised a hand to point a finger at me. Olivier's green-haired figure appeared next to her, and a second later my eyes met his. And then he disappeared back inside the palace.

He was obviously looking for me. The considerate thing to do would have been to go down to see him right that moment; alas, I didn't feel like moving from my comfortable spot just yet. I was sure Olivier would appreciate getting some exercise in the long run. It was good for a knight to stay healthy and alert, after all.

About ten minutes later I heard footsteps behind me, and turned around to see Olivier emerge to the platform from the staircase. He was pretending not to be out of breath; his disguise was rather poor, but he was much better at hiding his annoyance with me after the long climb. It wasn’t _my_ fault that the Elders refused to build elevators in the palace.

“Y-Your Majesty,” Olivier said while gasping for air, “we just... received... an urgent message.”

“Is it bad news?” I asked, reluctantly leaving my favoured spot by the railing.

“No, not at all... It's an invitation.”

An invitation could as well have been bad news. It meant some dull formal occasion that I couldn't say no to, even if I had no real interest in participating.

I made my way down the stairs, Olivier right at my heels, and we entered the salon at the end of the staircase. A maid immediately hurried over to bring us readily prepared tea. I reached to pick one of the porcelain cups on display by the salon’s tea table, but the maid hurried to pick it for me before I had the chance to touch it. I always had to give it a try, even though I could tell it bothered the servants every single time.

I gestured Olivier to sit down (if I didn’t, he’d keep awkwardly standing next to me while I had the tea alone). Once the maid had finished setting up the tea and left the salon with her head bowed low, Olivier said: “Your Majesty has been invited into a royal conference with the other kings.”

My hands stopped half-way while bringing the cup to my mouth.

“What?” the question escaped the said mouth.

“A conference,” Olivier repeated patiently, “with the other kings. In the Snow Glory Palace of the Country of North. The date has been set as the first of Glebemoon, but there is still room for discussion if needed. We need to send a confirmation to the royal Genbu-ou family, preferably as soon as possible.”

I only stared at my knight for a short while, forgetting to finish the sip from my tea.

“The other kings?” I then said. “Isn't that a bit too sudden? Moreover – the first of Glebemoon is in two weeks!”

“I may have failed to remind Your Majesty, but the plans for this conference have been underway for some time now,” Olivier said coolly in his usual self-important manner. “As you should know, all four kingdoms are currently in an exceptional situation. Four kings who have yet to come of age. The North is the only kingdom whose former king has yet to pass away, hence they are hosting the conference.”

Of course I knew about the situation. I had inherited the position of the Byakko-ou as a child after my father’s death. Curiously enough, something similar had happened to both the current Seiryuu-ou and Suzaku-ou. I wasn't sure about the circumstances around Genbu-ou, though – it was rather unusual for a minor to have been given the status of a king while both of his parents were still alive. Maybe the Country of North just favoured young rulers, or some circumstances had rendered the previous Genbu-ou unable to carry out her duty anymore.

That said, I had never met any of them. In fact, I had only ever met ambassadors from other countries, and only when they visited my palace. And now I was suddenly told that I would meet all three of them at once, in two weeks time. (Now that Olivier mentioned it, I may have remembered a very, very distant mention of something like this, but it had been a matter of the undefined future back then.)

“You mean,” I said slowly as the extent of this information was sinking in, “I'm going to travel to the Country of North? To meet the other kings?”

“Of course, I will accompany you there. Does it cause you worry, Your Majesty? Should I tell them to postpone the date?”

'Worry' wasn't the exact word I had in mind. What these news made me feel was a mixture of confused surprise, anticipation, and... er...

“The North?” I asked again. “Really? Out of all places, it has to be the North?”

“Yes, both the representatives of the North and the East advocated this decision, with quite some determination, even. The Elders also supported it, once the exact terms of the visit had been laid out. It seems that the South pursued to have the meeting held in the Sand Lily Castle, but they had to yield in the end.”

I furrowed my brows. The way in which Olivier chose his words implied some political agenda behind that decision. As the king, I was pretty much excluded from any decision-making, partially because of my age, but more so because of the Byakko-ou’s status as the symbolic, rather esoteric leader of the West. This rarely pleased me, if ever; and obviously enough, I had no say in the matter whatsoever.

But the Country of North was definitely at the bottom of my list of possible future resorts. Its soil was permanently covered in snow, the climate was freezing most of the time, and the Northern sky was so ominously dark, it overshadowed the entire picture that my mind’s eye painted of the country. No wonder the Southerners were against it; I would rather have chosen the scorching South over the North. But nobody asked for my opinion. Again.

I finally remembered to drink my tea. Its steaming warmth granted me some comfort in this situation.

“I see,” I only said. “Well then, I guess you’ll begin the preparations for travelling to the North.”

“Yes indeed, Your Majesty. Do you not find it exhilarating to get to visit a foreign country for the first time?”

“Are you mocking me, Olivier?” I asked, throwing a glance of warning at him. We both knew better than well that the Byakko-ou couldn’t leave the kingdom without a politically specified reason and the Elders’ permission.

“Oh, I would never,” Olivier assured, obviously holding back a complacent grin. “I exist to support Your Majesty. But you have expressed feeling like a, how was it again, _bird in a cage_ before, so I expect a change of scenery to be a rejuvenating experience.”

I took another quiet sip of the tea. I had indeed been harboring such feelings – for some time already.

“I just need to digest it for a bit,” I then said. “This is really sudden. And the North...”

“You shouldn't worry about the North so much. It is quite a unique place, if you give it a chance to charm you.”

I had my suspicions on the matter at the time…


	4. Byakko-ou II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Laws of physics or anything else don’t exist.
> 
> (- this chapter is a rewritten version of the old oneshot that i originally posted)

“Don’t forget the mittens. Yes, both the gloves and the mittens! Don’t you know how cold it gets up there?!”

I stared at the growing pile of clothes as Mao kept shooting her orders at both me and the servants in charge of packing. It was quickly starting to feel like I was about to be sent to an expedition in a cold wasteland of no return, rather than a formal visit to another royal palace. Surely the Snow Glory Palace was actually warm inside... We were about to visit a royal palace, not a freezer, right? It wasn’t  _ made  _ of snow despite its name, was it?

Mao was being exceptionally fussy about this. I never asked her to help, but she tended to invite herself over in every occasion, and had somehow named herself as some sort of packing supervisor now. Such were the privileges of the fiancée of the king, I guess.

She also appeared several times more excited about this trip than me.

“And remember to change into those woollen socks before you reach the North, Rei-nii,” she babbled on. “I’m sure you remember how it was when you got sick, and you don’t want an encore of that, ever.”

“You should be telling that to Olivier, not me. And how many times have I told you not to call me that?” Not in front of the servants, anyway; even while avoiding their eyes, I could sense the shocked, reproachful stares across the dressing room.

“Rei-nii is Rei-nii,” Mao reasoned without a hint of shame in her chipper voice. “Come on, hurry up! See, there comes Mr. Snobbypants. It’s almost time!”

I let out a discreet sigh as Olivier entered the salon. We hadn’t even left the palace yet and I was already feeling worn out. I’d slept poorly the previous night; two weeks hadn’t been even remotely enough for me to prepare for this, and I found myself nervous to the point of feeling a bit sick to my stomach.

While I busied myself mulling over this, Olivier took charge of the luggage and assigned it to the escorting guards. The amount seemed excessive for a two day trip. It was probably just all clothes.

This all felt plain absurd. In fact, this whole day had felt somewhat unreal to me, as if I was watching it unravel through a veil before my eyes.

Fifteen minutes later that sentiment became quite literal, as Olivier placed a veiled hat on my head. I’d have to wear it on the way through the outer palace gates, as only the inhabitants of the inner palace were allowed to see my face.

And then, we were ready to set out to the Country of North. To set out of the country for the very first time in my life.

Olivier had repeatedly told me not to hold prejudice towards the other nations, but it was easy for him to say. The very image of the North stirred disturbed fear in me. The thought of a land with a black sky and white soil, the polar opposite of the West with its dark buildings against the white sky...  How could something so backwards even exist?

And just maybe, I didn’t want to agree with Olivier out of principle. Everything had always been decided for me; I had no say in how to live my own life, all because I had been born as the king of the Country of West, a kingdom obsessed with its plethora of ancient traditions and doctrines. Because I was worshipped as the icon of the holy beast, I was essentially kept locked away while the country was run by the Elders, an assembly of people said to be “enlightened” and thus privileged to hold all the power in their hands – old, very old wrinkly hands, as they were said to have lived for hundreds of years already. Whether it was true, it was impossible for me to know, of course. The people of this country had always been following the same centuries-old guidelines set by… who, exactly? Some strangers who had lived a century ago, probably. Do this, do that – it was the rules decided by those strangers that stated what I was and wasn’t allowed to do.

But while it was true that I felt caged in my palace, I had always lived a safe, sheltered life of no external hardships. Nothing dangerous from the outside ever got in. To put it simply, I was nothing but a nervous wreck about leaving the palace that day, and all of this contributed in my inability to do anything but hide behind the white veil of my hat in unspoken horror as I was lifted to the back of Olivier’s unicorn-shaped holy beast companion. Moments later we had taken off, me and Olivier and the band of other escorts. I only caught a glimpse of Mao waving her goodbyes before the holy beast took off at a speed impossible for any other creature. Holy beasts were beings of magic, and their inhuman speed made the journey three times shorter than if we travelled on a bullet train. I believed that the only reason we humans didn’t evaporate out of existence in the process was that we ourselves, as nobility, possessed magic in our bodies.

It wasn’t my first time travelling on Unicolyon’s back – this was my main means of transportation in the royal capital – but we’d never run  _ this  _ fast before. The veil was fast rendered useless, flying behind me like a white flag, and I watched over my shoulder as the sceneries of the West zoomed past in a blur of a colour, like the palette of a messy painter. Blotches of yellow, orange and purple blended into one golden-brown chaos. Soon the tall, dark buildings of the city had already been left behind. Even if there were occasional passers-by on the remote route we took, it was near impossible for a normal human eye to follow a holy beast in full speed. No audience saluted me leaving the kingdom. No one wishing me a good travel, or good luck.

The capital of Tianguan was located in the far-upper part of the country, and it took us no longer than three hours to reach the border. We had long ago passed the point of my previous furthest travels; I had never been this far from home, now at the far-right edge of the Duchy of Kuí. I thought I could already feel a cold wind nibbling at my skin...

A river divided the West from the North, connected by three separate bridges across the border. We stopped at the border offices before setting foot on one of said bridges. The river wasn’t very wide, nor the bridge very long, and the opposite shore didn’t look all that different from the one we were standing on. A very similar border office awaited us on the Northern side. (Of course, being the king, I was allowed to pass through without standing in line at the customs or whatever people usually did in these places.)

It was the sky that caught my attention first. The sight was bizarre: the skyline abruptly changed from the Western white into the Northern black, as if a giant black wall had suddenly risen out of nowhere. No sunlight got through the black horizon; the darkness had simply swallowed the sky. Frankly, I found it terrifying. 

The escorts changed my clothes into uncomfortably thick winter garments during our stop. On my shoulders now draped a heavy hooded mantle of blue silk with a white fur trim, and it had me sweating just from wearing it over my formal robes which already contained several layers as they were. I felt like I was drowning in clothes, in very much the same manner as the sky was helplessly drowning in darkness. We commenced the journey across the bridge.

Of course, the change from one country to another wasn’t as drastic as I had feared. Rationally thinking, it only made sense that the parts of the Country of North that levelled with the uppermost mansions of the West didn’t look or feel all that foreign. As we advanced further into the country, the gradual changes in the passing scenery began to show; the small roads we still travelled along were now becoming darker and darker, despite it still being early afternoon. Likewise, the lights of the towns of the North grew brighter and more imminent the further we advanced. We traced the shores of an enormous lake for nearly an hour, to the point that I had to clarify from Olivier that it wasn’t, in fact, the ocean, which roused such a derogatory laugh from the knight that I didn’t want to open my mouth for the rest of the journey. (He told me that lakes of this size were perfectly common in the North.)

And once the shore was behind us, we entered the land of snow.

Getting used to the sudden cold took time and some conscious effort. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to wrap the mantle more tightly around myself, or hold onto the hood to protect my face. The speed at which we were moving only made the cold breeze worse.

And without warning, we entered a sudden white-out, assaulted by what felt like a shower of icy cold needles on the exposed part of my face, so I decided to choose the hood while cowering behind Olivier’s back. 

My sense of time was gone. The violent breeze seemed to continue for hours. It took all my strength to endure the blast of freezing air and stay close to Olivier; I couldn’t hear anything but the whistle of the wind, and my own breathing under the heavy hood, and inside my head, Mao’s warnings that now tormented me relentlessly. Maybe this had actually been a terrible, terrible idea. Maybe I shouldn’t ever have left the safety of my palace after all...

Then, we stopped. It took me a moment to realise that we did.

“Are you all right, Your Majesty?” I heard Olivier say from somewhere far away, in other words, right behind the hood that I still clutched over my cold ears. “We have arrived in the capital of the North. We stopped to send word of our arrival ahead. Would you like to get off for a moment?”

I straightened my posture from the crouch I had slumped into, lifted the hood off my eyes and took a cautious look around. The place we had stopped at certainly didn’t look like a royal capital; we were on a shady-looking alley, dimly lit by old lamp posts, surrounded by equally old-fashioned houses on both sides. My shaky knees nearly buckled as I slid off Unicolyon’s back, and as I stood on my own feet again seconds later, I couldn’t shake off the rocky sensation left by the journey. The cobblestone road hidden under the powder snow at my feet didn’t help, either. The snow’s quantity certainly didn’t match the blizzard we had just travelled through. The place we’d stopped at must have been the outskirts of the city, why else would it have been so quiet and – and – just strangely empty. I couldn’t see any people anywhere, no lights in the windows.

I was dizzy and overwhelmed by both the long trip, the distance away from home, and just the current state of affairs in general. The mere thought that I would soon be meeting the other kings made me feel something akin to nausea, and I now realised how the relentless strain on my nerves and muscles had left my body aching all over.

“I’ll go take a walk while waiting,” I told Olivier, my legs already carrying me in an undefined direction before I knew it. “I can’t stand still.”

“I’ll come with you,” Olivier said immediately and hopped off his Unicolyon.

“No, I want to be alone. Just for a minute. I’ll be right… er… there.”

I had no idea where this “there” was, but it hardly mattered. As long as I could just – have a moment for calming myself down. How fortunate it actually was that there were no other people in sight.

I walked along the cobblestone alley. It steered slightly to the left, and as I walked, I placed my mitten-covered hand on a stone wall that ran alongside the road’s curve, sweeping snow off it as I went.

Behind the corner of the curved street, I suddenly found myself standing in front of an opening. The stone wall ended in a set of rather meek, rusty gates, and beyond them spread what appeared to be the yard of a lone, large building that rose from the snow a few feet away. The building was also made of stone, and parts of it had collapsed on itself. It must have been abandoned, I reasoned, as it stood in such a remote location, and its old, run-down appearance was so very desolate.

I walked closer, studying the building with cautious curiosity. It looked like an old castle of some sort; the collapsed part appeared like it had once been a tower. Probably the least damaged part of the castle was a row of stone pillars that lined the side I approached the building from in relatively good form. 

I traced the castle’s outline with my eyes. Then, I let them stray off beyond, to the sky that the collapsed tower stood against. And, to my surprise, I now realised that it wasn’t completely black. It was filled with specks of light... The stars, and the Moon, and...

I turned away from the building and took another step or two further into the desolate yard. Each step was followed by a soft crunch of the snow under my feet. I pushed the hood off my face and tilted my head back, taking a better look above. I had assumed the sky to be void of all light, but as I now stood there staring at its upward depths, I saw a brilliant whirl of hues of purple blending in with the beautiful, velvety black. Against that glossy darkness shone the silvery crescent of the shy Moon, shrouded in a thin veil of clouds as if making a half-hearted attempt at concealing itself. The distant shine of thousands of stars dotted the arch of the sky and continued till the ends of the horizon, like jewels embedded in its fine folds of dark velvet.

I filled my lungs with the cold, crisp air, my feet no longer shaking. It was so quiet, and so serene. The complete opposite of the busy West. While eerie, the absence of other people on the empty castle yard gave me with a strange, almost surreal sense of inner peace, and as a near euphoric calm slowly settled on me, I noticed that the cold still nibbling at my cheeks was but a shadow of the violent breeze from earlier. Indeed, I was taken aback by how little the cold now bothered me.

I let my gaze sweep over the frozen soil anew. Covered in a blanket of pearly white, it was like a mattress of diamonds shining a light of its own against the black sky. Some stray flakes of snow floated lazily down from the dark heights, swaying left and right as they went, as if they had all the time in the world, they were in no hurry to reach the ground. I reached out my hand and watched as some of those fragments landed on the wool of my mitten. Their shape reminded me of Western jewelry. How bizarre it was for all that white mass covering this land to be made up of these tiny, tiny jewels.

That moment – it was that moment when I first understood my own real ignorance over the rest of the world. I had feared the North so, I had feared  _ this _ . But it was all so beautiful to me now. I should have known better; I was so aware of my own life of imprisonment in the West, yet had failed to allow the North a single amiable thought in my cowardice. The Northern air was so easy to breathe, the serenity of it all so captivating.

I was finally outside. Even if it was only for a day, I had left the palace far behind me, and now I was outside. I closed my eyes and enjoyed that soft, perfect silence.

But suddenly, an alarming feeling struck me. As plain as if a dagger had just pierced the skin on my back, I felt someone watching me. I had been so engulfed in marvelling at the scenery that I had let my guard down, failed to notice someone… But that was strange. With my ability to sense people’s auras, it simply shouldn’t have been possible for anyone to sneak behind my back this way.

I turned on my heels, alert and prepared to face whoever was there – and saw nothing. The only thing moving in my field of vision was the gradually falling snow.

But I could most definitely feel someone’s presence somewhere in the shadows... 

“I know someone’s there,” I called out into the silence, assuming the most commanding tone that I could muster, straightening my posture in self-aware importance. “Show yourself!”

For another quiet moment, nothing happened.

Then, finally, someone emerged from behind one of the stone pillars of the run-down castle. The person was obviously hesitant to leave the safety of their hiding place. Covered in a dark cloak from head to toe, it was the thin figure of someone slightly shorter than me. 

Was this a child, maybe a beggar or a wanderer? Either way, their appearance was suspicious. They were holding a black umbrella, pointed towards the ground.

“Who are you?” I asked with a frown as the stranger remained mute. I stepped back and assumed a threatening stance. Truthfully, I didn’t know any combat or self-defence whatsoever, but an enemy was never supposed to know that.

The stranger seemed just as alarmed by my behaviour as I felt by their appearance. They dropped the umbrella and flung their arms in front of their hooded face as if to prove their innocence. 

“I’m not anyone fishy, I swear!” The breathy voice must have belonged to a boy younger than me. “I was just walking past and was really surprised to see someone like you here, and I – I panicked and didn’t know what to do, so I…”

People who claimed not to be fishy were usually the most fishy ones. Either way, this person appeared to be a mere child. And yet, how didn’t I notice his presence any earlier?

“You know who I am?” I then asked, unsure. How well did the Northerners know me? Enough to recognise me from appearance alone? I didn’t have the slightest idea. Olivier was going to be enraged if he heard that I’d let a random stranger see the Byakko-ou’s face...

“Why, of course,” said the stranger. “I don’t think anyone could not. I mean, your looks kinda give it away immediately.”  _ Oh, I guess they do, then. _ “But what’s a person of such importance doing here?”

There was something irritatingly pretentious in his tone of voice, and he certainly didn’t show to have any appropriate manners that the presence of a king would have required. He must have been a member of less sophisticated lower class.

I took another step back.  _ Crunch _ , said the snow under my foot. “That is none of your business, now, is it?”

Although the boy’s face was shrouded in the shadow of the hood he wore over his head, I was almost certain I could see a hint of confusion, and he fell into a baffled silence for a moment. 

Then, he tilted his head to the side. “Hm, I guess you’re right, it really isn’t. I was just wondering if you’re lost. I could show you the way –”

“No thanks, my escorts are nearby. My knight, too.” As if I would follow some beggar-looking hayseed who had just admitted to stalking me from the ruins. I was hoping that mentioning a knight served as enough of a warning.

Apparently, it did. “Okay then…” The boy reached down for the umbrella that he had dropped, threw it on his shoulder, and turned away to leave the scene.

As I followed his dark back with my eyes, still puzzled by his sudden appearance and half expecting him to turn back and attack me, I noticed a single, colourful patch on the otherwise black umbrella that hung over his shoulder. It was an emblem – something had been embroidered on it… The shape of a shield, and a... 

A black tortoise?

“Wait a second…”

A shield with a black tortoise on it – I knew it to be the the coat of arms of the royal Genbu-ou family.

Now the seemingly unnecessary umbrella and the stranger’s odd behaviour made sense. The umbrella must have been stolen, he was either a thief or – or something equally suspicious, it fit perfectly with sneaking around in such a desolate place while dresses do suspiciously. That castle seemed like an ideal location for hiding stolen goods, too. Such was my reasoning, and I was a little proud of connecting the dots so cleverly, like a master detective.

“Hey!” I shouted after him. “You! You beggar, have you stolen that umbrella? Wait! Wait, you thief!”

The cloaked stranger threw a quick glance over his shoulder and picked up the pace, already disappearing into the castle’s long shadows. I was about to take off to a run to pursue him, already imagining a heated chase scene in the snow, despite being fully aware that I hadn’t run a dozen feet in probably a decade and was doomed to lose such a race – when my knight’s voice interrupted my noble intentions.

“Your Majesty! Oh, there you are, I was worried that you’d gotten yourself lost.”

I whirled around and saw Olivier standing by the stone gates, staring at me with his brows raised quizzically.

“What on Earth were you shouting just now?” he asked. “We need to get going.”

“There’s someone here sneaking around while carrying the royal family’s property,” I said, finding myself a little breathless from the unexpected encounter alone. “It must have been stolen – if we hurry, we might still be able to catch him –”

“But Your Majesty –”

I could no longer see the boy in the cloak, but I nevertheless took a few steps further in the snow, in an attempt to go after him… only to come to the astonishing realisation that the rest of the castle yard was covered by a large pool, concealed in the shadows on the unlit yard. But I definitely saw the stranger take his leave that way…

“The journey must have left Your Majesty exhausted,” Olivier reasoned and walked over to me, planting the veiled hat on my head all of a sudden. “The Snow Glory Palace isn’t very far away from here. Let us go, if you may.”

“Why do I have to wear this? There’s nobody here.”

“Of course not, this area has been reserved for our use. But people are going to see you on the way to the palace. I know you are exhausted, but you must get a hold of yourself and stop acting so silly. We will be in royal company soon.”

_ Silly _ , he said, when I was being perfectly serious.

But Olivier was right about me being exhausted. The Snow Glory Palace was unfortunately close, as I hardly had any time to collect myself after the strange encounter before I found us standing in front of the foreign palace already.

Despite what Olivier said, there hadn’t been that big a crowd outside. The entire palace area was closed off from curious eyes – quite literally, as it was located on a lone, rather small island in the middle of one of those lakes that just appeared to be everywhere in the North. The only occasion of actually running into curious Northerners was right before we entered a bridge that took us to the palace gates. The shore around the gates was covered in a thick line of trees, with low branches that drooped low from the weight of the snow.

The Snow Glory Palace was rather different from what I had imagined it to be. Everything was so… well…  _ small _ . The island that the palace stood on was small, and the gates at the end of the bridge were small and, apparently, the only entrance before we already found ourselves in front of the main palace. And said main palace was a single three-store building that occupied most of the tiny island. It was white, wide and flat and, to me, rather looked like a block of ice, only with rows of small windows carved into it. But the windows shone a warm light that was reflected in the white of the snow outside. Naturally, my only base of comparison was my own palace, and this was as different from it as anything could be.

My memory of our arrival is hazy, and the clearest image that I have of it were the figures of the previous Genbu-ou and her husband in front of the brilliantly white staircase that lead to the palace. There was no sign of the Genbu-ou himself, though, to my relief at the moment. While exchanging formal greetings with us (I remember her shaking my hand, a foreign gesture that I did know about but which surprised me to the point that I didn’t know how to respond for one embarrassing second), the previous king lamented the absence of her son despite him being well aware of our estimated time of arrival. This other king didn’t appear very punctual, then. The remaining two hadn’t reached the capital yet.

After the obligatory formalities and shedding a few layers of clothes, which made me feel like a moulting reptilian who finally got rid of his disgusting old skin, I was escorted into a salon, or rather, a hall-like chamber with no windows. Once inside, I was surprised by how high up the ceiling actually appeared to be; the palace hadn’t looked nearly as tall from outside. It was a lavishly decorated hall, with curvy carvings of silver climbing up the walls, all the way to the far-off ceiling, from which hung five chandeliers, and each of the chandeliers had what at least appeared to be a dozen of real, lit-up candles. Below the chandeliers stood a long table covered with a white tablecloth, and four chairs set around it, made of some clear substance that could have either been glass or crystal. I didn’t know which it was, but it was a common sight in the Snow Glory Palace from what I had seen so far. It was fitting for the ice-like impression; perhaps the numerous ice sculptures that I had seen adorning the palace grounds were actually made of crystal as well, and not real ice at all. The palace felt very bright and luminous, as if the building itself shone a faint light that lent it dream-like ambience. But it was not cold inside, so the decor couldn’t possibly have been made of ice… could it?

I drew a deep breath. As soon as I had sat down in one of the chairs, I felt calmer and more collected again. I was relieved to have a moment to mentally prepare myself before facing the other kings.

Maybe Olivier, who now stood behind me like a pillar of ice himself, had also been right about me acting silly. But I most certainly hadn’t hallucinated my encounter with the cloaked stranger – I wasn’t  _ that  _ far gone...

I leaned back and lifted my eyes to the tall ceiling. It really did appear to be absurdly high up above my head. I tilted my neck further backwards and almost felt dizzy staring at the painting that covered the arching ceiling in the distance. The painting depicted a coastal landscape of a stormy sea...

I sat in the silent hall alone for quite a while. Olivier hadn’t said a word after entering the room; just as I was beginning to wonder whether I should inquire on his thoughts on the palace, as I knew him to be an avid admirer of art and architecture alike, the large doors opened and in stepped a short figure with a carefree stride.

“Woaaaaah, look at this! It’s  _ huge _ ! The place wasn’t this tall from outside, did we just walk through some kinda portal or what?”

This had to be Seiryuu-ou of the East. There was this certain something about his presence that seemed to immediately fill the room, immediately erasing the hollow feeling from only moments earlier. He was a boy around my age, but his countenance couldn’t have been more different from mine; he was loud, easy going, and obviously packed with vigour. He had dark indigo hair that blended into an azure hue at the end of a loosely-tied ponytail, and he wore robes not all that different from mine, if only simpler in design and – lucky him – fewer in layers. His blue robe had a straight collar instead of a crossed one like mine was, but the most striking feature of his outfit was the long, plaited train that drooped after him like some sort of tail. What a strange ceremonial garment. Behind him walked his knight who was nothing like his master; a tall, stoic-looking young man with facial features that reminded me of a hawk. He had an overall sharp and humourless appearance. On his arms, the knight was carrying a folded red cape, undoubtedly Seiryuu-ou’s, tossed aside by its wearer.

I stood up to bow politely at the newcomers. “Hello, I am Byakko-ou from the West,” I introduced myself. “You must be Seiryuu-ou, correct? Pleased to meet you.”

“Yeah, nice to meet you too!” the other king replied cheerfully (he didn’t bother to bow). “And this big, scary-looking guy is Ralf. Don’t mind him, he’s not very social.”

Ralf did some sort of half-nod, half-bow. I wasn’t sure whether it was him admitting to being scary and asocial, or an expression of politeness. Or both.

“And this is Olivier,” I then introduced my knight accordingly.

Seiryuu-ou certainly didn’t seem to be taking the meeting too seriously; I was a little glad to be engaged in small talk with him, out of all people, for the next few minutes. The sense of awkward emptiness was gone, and I was happy to see that the other kings weren’t as rigid and formal as I had feared.

Or so I thought, until the doors were opened again. Judging from the looks of the person who stepped into the hall next, I could tell that this was Suzaku-ou – and that he wanted to be there even less than I did. Suzaku-ou, clad in a striking uniform of black and gold, with a similarly striking cape of vermilion feathers on his shoulders, wore such an apathetic expression on his face that I was unsure of whether I should even greet him or not, suspecting that he might not be interested in any superficial exchange of goodwill.

Suzaku-ou walked over to the crystal table without stopping to look at his surroundings. His knight, who did have a rather solemn air around him but was surprisingly short for a royal knight, to the point of looking like a child, quietly pulled out a chair for his master. Both Suzaku-ou and his knight had perky red hair.

Seiryuu-ou didn’t seem to share my sentiments about the situation at all.

“Hi!” he immediately called out to Suzaku-ou, jumping up from his chair like an excited rabbit. “I’m Seiryuu-ou! Though I’d prefer if you called me Takao! Nice to meet you!”

Suzaku-ou gave him a tired look and didn’t move an inch.

“His Excellence,” announced his knight instead from behind his back, “Suzaku-ou of the Country of South.”

“I- I’m Byakko-ou,” I said hesitantly. I wasn’t sure about the correct etiquette in this situation, and whether I was supposed to introduce myself or let Olivier do it; Seiryuu-ou’s sudden, light-hearted appearance had left me confused.

“Just one left, huh,” Seiryuu-ou then commented, looking curiously at me and everyone else now present in the room. “Kinda surprised to see the guy in charge of the place not here. Is he late? Usually I’m the one who’s always late from everything, but Ralf kinda dragged my ass here on time by force.”

His rough language almost made me choke in restrained laughter. Ralf said nothing, his hawk’s eyes set on the opposing wall.

“I haven’t seen him yet, either,” I then said, glad to break the silence caused by Suzaku-ou’s gloomy entrance. “Not the best of first impressions, this is.”

And just as I finished speaking, the doors opened one last time.

“Sheesh, I’m sorry to be late, but better late than never, eh?” came a voice from the doorway. A familiar-sounding voice.

It took me a second or a few for it to sink in as to  _ why  _ it sounded familiar. But then, at once, I realised exactly where I had heard it earlier that day. I gasped and jumped up with such force that Olivier had to save my chair from falling over.

“I-It’s you?!”

Genbu-ou, who had been walking towards us, stopped in his tracks. He turned to look at me, a curious look on his childlike face. And he wore the exact same, sheepish smile that I had seen on the face of a cloaked stranger by the old castle only an hour or so before. It was most definitely the same voice and the same grin, but instead of a black cloak he wore a formal suit with a pearly white tailcoat and a matching vest, a cravat in the front and – whatever, I didn’t care about what he was wearing, I was too appalled by the grim realisation.

“What?” he asked, his voice so innocent, “is something the matter? Something wrong with my hair?” He gave a pat to his poofy hair, blonde with blotches of black, before he made his way to the only empty seat left, on Suzaku-ou’s side of the table, opposite of me, to my dismay.

“What?” Seiryuu-ou parroted the other king and threw wild looks at me and Genbu-ou. “What’s going on? You two know each other already or what? Hey, that’s not fair, I thought we’re all on the same line of awkward here.”

“Hmm, just a little bit,” Genbu-ou replied and sat down. His knight, who also had fair hair of the curly sort like his master, let out a dramatic sigh as he took his place next to Genbu-ou’s seat.

“Your Highness, have you done something unnecessary again? I don’t even know why I ever help you carry out this nonsense…”

“Because it’s fun, Giancarlo, that’s why,” Genbu-ou said with a content smile.

He and Seiryuu-ou then proceeded to exchange some harmlessly cheery greetings and other formalities, while I tried to recollect myself and cool down my now bright red face. As much as I would have wanted to demand an explanation from the king of the North right there and then, I was forced to downplay my shock as Genbu-ou’s parents followed the blonde duo into the conference hall.

“I am so very pleased to finally see you all together,” Mizuhara Judy said and gave us a polite bow, “and in our Snow Glory Palace, nonetheless. It’s truly an honour. Welcome to the Country of North, young kings! I hope you all enjoy your brief stay – and can use this as an opportunity to get to know each other, of course. Are you quite alright, Byakko-ousama?”

I must have failed to hide my agitation. “Y-Yes,” I stuttered, “yes, I’m fine, thank you.”

“You don’t look fine at all, Your Majesty,” Olivier whispered in my ear.

“ _ I called him a beggar _ ,” I whispered back in a hoarse voice and flailed my hand at my knight, as if to shoo a mosquito off my ear.


	5. Genbu-ou I

I hurried my steps, soundless in the snow. I was well aware that the guests would be arriving any minute now, and I’d be late for sure. I hadn't meant to stay out for this long; I'd only meant to go fetch the umbrella I'd forgotten in the park last time, but I ended up loitering around for way too long again. I just couldn't help it.

Before this day, I’d been pretty excited about getting to meet the other kings, but as the hour to _actually_ meet them crept closer and closer, I was filled with unexpected anxiety. And in the rare occasions of getting anxious, I lost my sense of time somewhere, and also my will to return home. I’d done my share of procrastinating outside and was now finally rushing back, planning to take my usual shortcut across the abandoned churchyard to save at least a little bit of time.

But there was someone there. The area was supposed to be closed off, yet someone was standing still in the snowfall. Puzzled, I lifted the hood of my cloak just enough to better see the figure of a lone person standing in the middle of the deserted churchyard, apparently not caring about the snow.

Of course I figured out who he was immediately, even if I'd never met him face-to-face before – anybody would recognise that peculiar appearance of the king of the Country of West. But why was he _here_ , all alone? Where was his knight? Not that I was one to talk, as mine wasn't accompanying me, either. Giancarlo was probably giving my parents some sorry excuses for my absence right now. Poor Giancarlo. I put him through so much trouble.

I didn't have any real reason to hide, but instinctively sought cover from the shade of the stone pillars.

_I should go ask if he's lost_ , I thought. But my legs wouldn't move. I only stood there, peeping at Byakko-ou's figure from behind the pillar. He was looking up at the sky, his expression filled with marvel – right! He'd probably never seen snow before. It must have been strange. It was Glebemoon now, so the snowfall was fairly light, but I knew that standing still in the snow like that would eventually let the chill get to your bones. Maybe he wasn’t aware of it.

I felt like I was looking at a painting while staring at him and his sharp, lean features and beautifully patterned winter cloak on the dimly lit churchyard. And I have actual zero eye for art whatsoever. But there was definitely an air of extraordinary grace around him, something that evoked such alien thoughts in me; I’d seen him in photos before and such, but I had to admit that they didn’t do him much justice.

Then his expression changed all of a sudden. I dove behind the pillar on the exact same second as I realised he’s turning to look at me, my heart doing a jump or two from the surprise.

“I know someone's there! Show yourself!”

How’d he noticed me just like that, out of the blue? I'd made sure to be as quiet as possible. What excuse could I possibly give for spying on him from the shadows? Even _I_ didn’t really know why I was there to begin with. For a second I considered hiding my presence and just sneaking away… but before I knew, I had stepped into plain view already. I couldn't resist that beautifully commanding voice of his.

“I'm not anyone fishy, I swear,” I explained sincerely and raised my hands, accidentally dropping the umbrella in the snow as I did. “I was just walking past and was really surprised to see someone like you here, and I panicked and didn't know what to do, so I...” It was the honest truth, frankly. I definitely hadn't expected to run into another king on my way home.

Byakko-ou's face spoke of nothing but skepticism. Frowning, he asked: “You know who I am?”

What a silly question. Of course I knew.  “But what’s a person of such importance doing here?” Maybe adding a hint of flattery in there would work.

It didn’t. Byakko-ou took a cautious step back, as if I were some dangerous animal. “That is none of your business, now, is it?” he asked haughtily, obviously putting up a bold front.

I raised my brows as the thought dawned on me – he didn't recognise _me_ . I was wearing a hood over my head, so I guess he couldn't tell who I was. The sensible thing to do would have been to expose myself, but – I didn't want to embarrass him… like _this_ , anyway. The situation amused me so, and I had a bad habit of enjoying pulling self-important people by the nose a little. And Byakko-ou here seemed to be exactly the kind of person I enjoyed teasing the best.

_But remember that he's still a king_ , I reminded myself. _Treat him with respect._ Oh well, maybe if I dropped enough hints, he'd finally get it.

I tilted my head. “Hmm, I guess you're right, it really isn't. I was just wondering if you're lost. I could show you the way.”

Nope, he didn't get it. “No thanks, my escorts are nearby. My knight, too,” he said.

Was he threatening me? Things would get complicated fast if he called his knight over. Looked like my brief moment of fun was over already.

“Okay,” I simply said, quickly picked up my umbrella and turned my back to Byakko-ou. But I wasn’t in such a hurry anymore, now that I knew that the Westerners weren’t even at Snow Glory yet... Rather, wouldn’t it be a bit awkward to be there at the doors once they arrived? I could try to make it, or loiter around some more and arrive late like I had already been prepared to...

“Wait a second,” I heard Byakko-ou say behind me. Curiously, I shot my eyes over my shoulder. He was all worked up about something all of a sudden, looking my way.

“You! You beggar, have you stolen that umbrella? Wait! Wait, you thief!”

Holy crap. Now he was coming after me.

I hurried my steps, trying hard not to laugh out loud. Was this really happening? He thought I was some hobo who'd stolen the umbrella? Maybe this Byakko-ou wasn’t actually self-important – maybe he really knew nothing about anything and acted like this to cover it up. He was scared of me, a stranger.

Despite the hilarity of the situation, something about it struck me as incredibly sad, and incredibly… how to best put it... _pure_. I really should just have told him who I was from the start. This would only end up being more embarrassing to him later.

And yet, I didn’t do it. I’d savour that for later.

“Your Majesty!” I heard someone call from further away. It was probably Byakko-ou's knight, as nobody called _me_ a majesty around here, it was my Mama's title. I didn't stop to make sure, though; I used the distraction to get out of there for good, concealing my presence and running across the church yard’s old pool.

_So that was Byakko-ou of the West._ A strange fellow. Strange, and obviously lost.

* * *

This bizarre and amusing chain of events aside, the meeting with the other kings wasn't too bad. I knew that my parents wouldn't approve of my quirky behaviour as usual, but now that it had come down to this, I couldn't resist making a dramatic entry and savour that shocked look on poor Byakko-ou's face as he realised who I was. The reveal would have been awkward no matter how you looked at it, so at least I could make it funny, if nothing else. Maybe it’d help loosen the atmosphere a bit, too. We'd have something to start a conversation with.

It soon came to notice, though, that the atmosphere was just fine as it was. I had expected the conference to mostly be Mama and the knights speaking on us kings’ behalf, about diplomatic relations and whatever conferences were usually about, and it greatly pleased me to see that Seiryuu-ou had no intention whatsoever of sitting still and listening; he was one animated fellow, and clearly used to stealing the show. I ended up having a brisk conversation about his trip to the North, and his first impression of the country, and about food, which he also apparently prioritised over anything else – not a bad thing. I already liked him, and so did my Mama.

When we left the conference hall an hour later, to move on to the main dining hall for that ever-so-important food that Seiryuu-ou was so concerned about, Byakko-ou called after me and bowed his head deep.

“I apologise for having been so rude towards you. I didn’t even ask who you were; I only made rude assumptions.”

He was so genuinely shaken that I regretted my own behaviour just a little. On the other hand, it wasn't a bad way to meet someone for the first time. I didn't care for very formal meetings, and just maybe, this was actually the best way to get to know the ever-so-orderly Byakko-ou’s less formal side. I greatly preferred breaking the ice from the start. I wanted to be a friend with the other kings, not just another political figure.

“Oh geez,” I said in what I hoped to be an encouraging tone and patted Byakko-ou’s shoulder. “I admit, I was fooling around with you a bit. I’m sorry, too. It wasn’t fair of me to not take my hood off. But the whole situation was just amusing.”

For a moment he looked anything but amused with my response, his cheeks a little flushed from embarrassment or anger again; but then his expression softened, and suddenly he laughed, to my surprise.

“You’re right, now that I think of it, it was pretty amusing. I accused you of stealing your own umbrella, didn’t I?”

Seeing Byakko-ou drop his serious cover was enough to make me smile in response. I hummed in chipper agreement. “Mm-hmm, it was really funny. But I’m seriously hungry, so how about we put that behind us and go eat now?”

And so we followed the rest into the dining hall. I was in a much better mood myself, with all the anxious anticipation gone. It was easy enough for _me_ , being the only one who didn't need to travel miles away from home to some unknown place in the middle of nowhere to meet the others.

Now that the four of us – me, Byakko-ou, Seiryuu-ou, and Suzaku-ou – were all in one place for the first time, and the boring part of the conference was done with, I was suddenly overcome with the realisation of how big a deal it actually was. Really, I hadn't even considered before just how big it was. Maybe Byakko-ou had, and the pressure of it all had had him behave a little irrationally back there.

After dinner we moved places again, this time to the winter garden for desserts. The winter garden was a small conservatory and didn't fit eight people very well, which gave my parents an excuse to snatch the knights away from us. I guessed they were taken to have a little conference of their own. About knight things. Or something. Surely it must have been interesting for the royal knights to also meet each other? As far as I knew, they hadn’t served any of our parents before us. My Giancarlo had been hired to the palace to serve me, at least.

Anyway, then it was just the four of us in the small winter garden. As we sat down around another table, with nobody else present, I was suddenly filled with this strange feeling that I cannot really put into words, but – this realisation just struck me that these were the only three people in the whole world, the whole universe, who were the same as me. They were kings, the heads of their respective countries, and that was actually a huge deal. Together, we were just... complete, somehow. Maybe it's something only the four of us could understand. And I did think the others felt the same, because for a while, we only sat there in silence, exchanging looks of both confusion and a consensus of a particular sort. An air of curiosity hung above us under the winter garden’s crystal ceiling.

_These are the people I share the same fate with_ , I thought. Sounds a bit melodramatic, but I really did think so.

The first one to start talking was Seiryuu-ou, of course. He was so unconventional, unapologetic and genuine, with his unkempt hair and dark blue eyes. Or, perhaps, the things I saw as unconventional were just fine for a good king.

“Well, guys, I guess we should get to know each other then?” he proposed, looking at each one of us in turns. “Why don't we all tell something about ourselves? I live with my Gramps and this is the first time I'm in a foreign country.”

“First time for me as well,” said Byakko-ou next to him. Byakko-ou had dark purple hair with white tiger stripes, tied on a long braid that was always drooping behind him, and his eyes had a striking gold colour. I had always assumed his eyes only looked golden on camera for some reason – but no, it actually was their real colour.

Suzaku-ou stayed silent on the seat next to mine. He was obviously not very sociable, and judging from his grim presence, it wasn't just out of shyness. Being the polar opposite, I wasn't sure how to approach him as he kept sulking with his arms folded, not caring to do as much as look at the rest of us. His eyes were greyish purple, his hair half dark, half red, and he had four red triangles (some kind of ceremonial face paint, I assumed) on his cheeks that were unusually pale for a Southerner. The only thing countering the overall redness of his appearance was his pitch black uniform, adorned with golden epaulettes, aiguillettes, and medals of some sort. Seiryuu-ou and Byakko-ou wore long garments similar to each other in design, but the former’s were simpler in style; Byakko-ou's robes were flowy and beautiful, probably made of silk, and contained so many layers that I had no idea how he could breathe under all of them. Both of their outfits had long, wide sleeves, and were tied on the waist with a belt, Seiryuu-ou's with a thinner, lighter-looking one, Byakko-ou's with a wider, sturdier one.

They all looked so different from me, so much more mature. My wardrobe was mostly picked by Mama, and she certainly had a taste for frilly, doll-like outfits. I wasn't sure if I much cared for that anymore at this age, and actually enjoyed disguising myself to look more like a commoner from time to time. But because my distinct hair always gave me away, I usually wore the black cloak when I went outside alone.

“I've been to East and West,” I then contributed to the conversation, “but only to the upper parts, and it was before I was named the king. I travelled with my parents.”

“How come you got the title already, anyway,” Seiryuu-ou asked, “when both of your parents are still here?” The same question seemed to have bothered Byakko-ou as well, because he nodded his head and gave me a curious look. (Suzaku-ou did not.)

“Oh, it's 'cause my magic grew so strong so early, Genbu chose me as its master over Mama,” I explained. “Of course, the official coronation will have to wait until I turn eighteen.” Albeit all four of us were allowed to carry the crown already, we wouldn't receive the official Mandate of Heaven before coming of age. The only difference it really made in my case was that Mama would then be officially dismissed from her position as the head of the court. The other kingdoms, too, had adults at the reigns for now. But being a symbolic ruler of a kingdom was a big deal as it was, I knew that much.

I realised that their jaws had dropped open in unison. Even Suzaku-ou shifted slightly on my other side.

I gave them a sheepish shrug. “They did say it's pretty rare,” I admitted.

“Genbu _chose you?_ ” Byakko-ou repeated. “I had no idea the holy beasts could even do that.”

“What do you mean, your magic?” Seiryuu-ou then said, so aggravated by this information that he stood up from his seat (the two of them seemed to share this habit). “You can use magic??”

This time I threw a questioning look at him, as did Byakko-ou who seemed to share my sentiment.

“Did you not know that magic is real?” Byakko-ou blurted out, probably not meaning to sound as rude as he kind of did. But Seiryuu-ou didn't seem to catch the tone. “What do you think holy beasts are, then?”

“No! I mean, holy beasts are holy beasts! The only power I have is using a sword. Well, a fencing sword, but anyway.” Seiryuu-ou squinted at both me and Byakko-ou with suspicion. “Wait, was I supposed to know?” And then he also squinted at Suzaku-ou, maybe hoping to provoke a reaction out of him. “Can _you_ use magic too?”

Suzaku-ou did give a tiny nod, but he was clearly not interested in sharing any further insight into the topic. Or any topic. But I bet he was listening to every word.

Seiryuu-ou was devastated by this sudden revelation. “What kinda conspiracy is this?!” he exclaimed and aggressively grabbed another piece of a lemon curd cake. (There were several cakes on the dessert table.)

In all seriousness, it did sound strange. I knew I was a bit exceptional in this sense, but my powers were such a natural part of my everyday life that hearing of someone not knowing how to use his at all was like hearing how someone hadn't ever learnt to walk – I mean, someone with two working legs, because I was sure that Seiryuu-ou did have magic just like the rest of us...

…Or did he? Could it be possible for a king to just _not_ have any magic? No... I refused to believe that to be a possibility. The four heavenly kings had powers granted by the four holy beasts, and it seemed unlikely for there to exist a king without any. Even regular nobles could use a bit of magic, at least enough to summon their own holy beast companions.

“Did you learn to use magic by yourself?” I asked Byakko-ou. I was curious about Suzaku-ou as well, but didn't really want to bother him. He was a bit scary.

“Well, truthfully, I don’t know much about my own powers yet,” Byakko-ou said, a faint hue of embarrassed red on his cheeks. “I’ve known some magic all my life, but I – I'm just not allowed to use it.”

Oh, so it was one of _those_ things. I had heard about the religious doctrines of the Country of West. That place was as different from the North as could be, and I remembered wondering before how Byakko-ou hadn't yet gone crazy from being used as a puppet ruler by the country's elite. After meeting him in person, it felt even less justified. I wasn’t sure what I had expected beforehand, but was actually a bit glad about our little misunderstanding earlier, because it proved that Byakko-ou was very human after all, not just a puppet. Maybe a tad delusional from having been locked inside a palace all his life, but still. He made mistakes like anyone else, and it was horribly inhumane for the West’s elite to treat him the way they did.

While I was quietly brewing such thoughts, Seiryuu-ou straight up asked him: “Why aren't you allowed to use it?”

Byakko-ou let out a sigh that already expressed more than a hundred words could.

“My country is really strict about the importance of rules and tradition,” he explained. “Those rules also govern the use of my magic. The Elders call it the will of Byakko itself, but I don't really believe it... I think. I don't know – I didn't question it for such a long time. Rules were just rules to me, I guess. Made to be followed.”

“But you don’t think so anymore?”

“I started questioning it all, and everything always staying the same. Actually – well, it was purely coincidental, but I found an autobiography written by a former Seiryuu-ou in the royal library one day. So I read about life and traditions in the East on it, and suddenly everything about the West began to feel so backwards. I realised that there’s a whole different world out there.”

“Maybe it was by my Gramps,” Seiryuu-ou said with pride in his voice, “I know he's written some. Wouldn't that be cool?”

“I guess it's possible.”

“Was there stuff about learning self-discipline in the book?”

“Well, I think there was something of the sort, yes.”

“That's my Gramps alright. Always going on about that discipline crap.”

I turned to Byakko-ou with hiked brows, as this exchange of words was leaving me pretty puzzled pretty fast. “Why don't you just ask it, though?” I said. “Byakko, I mean?”

Byakko-ou gave me a blank stare.

So I clarified: “I don't believe it to be Byakko's will either, so if you had proof from Byakko itself, then nobody could tell you what to do anymore. Isn’t that the logical thing to do? Why follow rules that don’t actually benefit you at all?”

Now his expression turned plain horrified. He didn’t seem to take my suggestion very well.

“Ask Byakko?” he said, his golden eyes wide. “How on Earth would I ask Byakko about it?”

“What do you mean, how?”

“Are you saying I should just... talk to the holy beast??”

“Haven't you ever talked to your holy beast?” I asked equally confused.

“Wait,” Seiryuu-ou interrupted us, “where can you even meet the holy beast? Is there even more stuff I don't know about?!”

We all fell into dumbfounded silence. The reality of the divine beasts was so very different to each of us. Even Suzaku-ou seemed alerted after our quizzical exchange of words; he was probably pretending not to be, but I took notice of him intently observing us from behind his mask of no emotions. He still said nothing, though.

That was when the doors to the winter garden opened. Our knights were done with their own little meeting. Giancarlo was cheerfully chatting away with Byakko-ou's green-haired knight as they stepped in, and the thick silence inside the room seemed to take them by surprise.

“What a joyous atmosphere we have here,” Giancarlo commented sarcastically. He helped himself to the cane pastries on the table. They were his favourite.

“Ralf!” Seiryuu-ou barked at his knight as soon as he’d set foot inside. “Why didn’t I know that kings are supposed to have magic? Or that I could talk to Seiryuu? What the hell's going on here?! Explain!”

I had an awkward feeling that we had delved into a subject that ought to not have been touched. Seiryuu-ou's knight seemed to be in for an unpleasant conversation of sorts.

I decided to feign innocence and also help myself to the pastries. I quite liked them myself.


	6. Byakko-ou III

This wasn't how I had pictured our conversation to go.

Seiryuu-ou was so furious at his poor knight, the glass walls of the room were probably jingling from the uproar he was now making. He had grabbed the front of the knight's coat, yelling at his face (or trying to, anyway, as he couldn’t reach it).

“You've been lying to me all this time! You and Gramps both!”

“Please calm down, Your Highness.”

“Why should I?!”

I felt sorry for the knight, obviously embarrassed out of his mind by his king's temper tantrum. All the rest of us retreated further away from the door in silent consensus – except for Suzaku-ou, who hadn't left his seat, and his knight, who was giving Seiryuu-ou a pretty ruthless scorn at the moment.

“Your Highness!” Ralf hissed through gritted teeth and forced Seiryuu-ou's hands off his coat. “Listen, His Majesty will explain everything to you once we return to Cherrywood. Please behave yourself for now.”

“I demand an explanation _right now!_ ”

“There there, chill out,” Genbu-ou's knight tried to shush him, “maybe take it easy and have a cookie, Seiryuu-ousama...”

“The name’s Takao!” he bellowed in response. “I'm not some random nameless king who doesn't deserve to – know – anything!” (But he did move back to the table and grab the cookie that the knight was offering. I had never seen anyone eat something so angrily before.)

“What in the world is this all about?” Olivier asked me quietly.

“It seems that things have been a bit weird back in the East,” was the only answer I could think of that summarised the whole situation.

“He apparently doesn't know any magic,” Genbu-ou added, also speaking quietly enough to not be heard by the frantic Seiryuu-ou.

Olivier made a sound that expressed fascination, rather than shock.

It took a while to get Seiryuu-ou to calm down. He was short-tempered and impulsive, but it turned out that his anger also subsided equally fast once he had had enough. It took a lot of convincing from his knight for him to believe that his grandfather was already prepared to tell him everything once they returned to their own country. This left me with the impression that we had actually been _expected_ to bring all of this up with Seiryuu-ou, one way or another. Well, if his grandfather really was the author of the book that had basically changed my whole life, I trusted him to be an extremely sharp, insightful man.

As I had told the rest, the autobiography of the former Seiryuu-ou had opened my eyes to the realisation that somewhere out there was a world completely different from the one I lived in: a world where people, even the monarchs, could make their own decisions, choose their own path, pursue whatever their hearts desired and live their lives while being true to themselves. The former Seiryuu-ou had travelled great distances and learnt the ways of using a sword and magic through his own efforts, and had spent a good while of his life tutoring both the nobility _and_ the commoners of the East. To me, who had always been spoon-fed everything my life had ever consisted of and had no talents to speak of whatsoever, it was a shocking discovery that helped me re-shape my own reality. The book had looked both old and the kind of pristine that it wouldn’t have surprised me if it had never been opened before, squeezed in a very unnoticeable spot on one of the numerous library shelves. How it had found its way to our library, I couldn’t even imagine.

But I guess this commotion served as breaking the ice in the room, in a way. While waiting for Seiryuu-ou to sort things out with his knight, the rest of us had some cake (I wasn’t too fond of sweets, but this cake was rather good) and admired the view of a courtyard on the other side of the glass walls. Or, well, I admired it; Olivier was crazy about the wall itself, basically glued to it in admiration.

“The ice crystals are _beautiful!_ ” he kept saying repeatedly in breathless awe, obviously speaking of what had looked like ordinary glass to me. “Oh, Northern architecture is fantastic. How does the crystal stay clear in this weather? The snow is sliding across it so beautifully, it's magical...”

“That's because it actually _is_ magic,” Genbu-ou explained, “it's my Mama’s doing. The whole palace is shielded with her magic!”

I listened to their conversation half-heartedly, lost in my own thoughts. Olivier tended to be right about things, sometimes aggravatingly so, and now it had happened again, as I thought back to him insisting that I would change my mind about my dread towards the North. This place – be it the mere area surrounding the royal palace or not – possessed a sense of deep calm like nothing I had experienced before in my life. Maybe it was the snow that seemed to quell the entire land in soft silence, or maybe it was the absence of the busy streets and tall, dark buildings of the West.

“How do you like the North?” Genbu-ou suddenly asked me, as if my thoughts were an open book to him. He'd probably noticed how I was looking at the sky again, as I had been when we met outside earlier. I must have given him a horribly absent-minded picture of myself by now.

“It's different,” I replied politely, yet truthfully.

“Different from your country, or different from what you expected?”

“Both. But in a pleasant way.”

Genbu-ou gave me a bright smile. “I'm glad to hear that! I could show you around the palace a little, if you’d like?”

It sounded like a nice thing to do. Now that I had come all this way to a foreign country, I did want to use the opportunity and see as much as possible before I had to leave again. I was finally outside. I was out there in that world I had seen a glimpse of on the pages of books.

“There's something I have been wondering about, though,” Olivier then said pensively, now also staring up at the sky, his hands behind his back. “If the sky is always dark, how do you know when it's night-time?”

“That's obvious,” Genbu-ou said, and his voice had the same matter-of-fact tone it had had when suggesting that I should talk to Byakko. “The Moon goes down at night, and it gets a lot darker.”

Olivier and I glanced at him, all four of our brows raised. But I didn't even bother to vocalise my surprise anymore, because the pattern of this country just being the polar opposite of the West had already become clear to me. (I was rather sure that both East and South also had the Sun rise in the morning and go down for the night, though.)

“Is the Sun visible at night?” I had to ask.

“Yes, but it's pretty faint most of the time. More like a shadow. It gets brighter once a moon, though.”

We kept chatting idly in this manner, and eventually Seiryuu-ou managed to swallow up his rage. He was willing to join us to go take a look around the palace.

But the quiet Suzaku-ou had still not left his seat. He hadn't uttered a single word this whole time, and neither had his knight… until that very moment.

“Kai-sama, it's time.”

I perked my ears. Did I hear that right? A knight calling a king by his birth name? Was that normal? I’d never considered that other countries could have a different etiquette regarding this – there were great many things to learn about the world – but even Ralf didn't call Seiryuu-ou by name despite the king’s constant objections. I thought it just wasn't done.

Who was this Suzaku-ou, anyway? None of us had literally learnt a single thing about him yet. He seemed rather hostile; it was likely that he had been forced to attend the conference. But hadn't Olivier said that the Southerners had pursued to hold the meeting in their castle instead? Maybe Suzaku-ou himself hadn't had any say in the issue, just like me.

Without a word, Suzaku-ou stood up and left the room, walking past Seiryuu-ou who gave him a highly questioning look. As did the rest of us, anyway.

“Excuse us, Genbu-ousama,” said Suzaku-ou's knight haughtily, “but we must take our leave now. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Already?” said Genbu-ou, with a hint of disappointment. He attempted to approach the two, but Suzaku-ou had already stormed out on his own, and his knight followed suit quickly, nodding his head briefly at Genbu-ou as he went. Genbu-ou tried to bid them a safe trip home, but his words fell on deaf ears.

Not only were they asocial, these people were also very rude. As a man of integrity, it made my blood boil, but I kept my mouth shut.

“They're weird,” Seiryuu-ou worded what all six of us were probably thinking.

He wasn't wrong about that. Soon, we left the glass room ourselves and began our little tour around the palace.

Leading the way through the exuberant corridors of white, Genbu-ou immediately began to describe the history of the Snow Glory Palace to us, obviously well acquainted with all of it. He told us how it had been built in place of an old royal castle during a reform period, back when the North wished to differentiate itself from its neighbouring countries more prominently, and how it had half a mile worth of passageways, over three hundred doors and rooms (not all of which were used anymore, obviously) and eleven staircases. He could name each chamber we passed, often mentioning a thing or two about their construction or the artwork or regalia featured within, or small, fancy details, such as the placement of all twenty fireplaces in the palace. As expected, much of the decor had a marine theme – their sacred animal was the tortoise, after all. One of the long galleries even had an enormous aquarium, reaching from one end to the other, floor to ceiling.

But, it was strange, we never took our shoes off despite being inside. With each brisk step, the heels of Genbu-ou’s shoes clopped loudly against the checkered floors.

Whenever we passed someone on the corridors, Genbu-ou greeted them in a friendly manner, as if they all were his personal acquaintances. He knew every painting and every sculpture, each statue and candelabrum like his own pockets. It was clear that he held deep respect for this place and for his family, but in a way that made it all very... light-hearted. He skimmed across the corridors and galleries with the joyous enthusiasm of a child, and while his words were filled to the brim with pride, it was a very different kind from how I, for instance, would have spoken of my Tiger Maple Palace. Genbu-ou's respect for this palace came from cherishing his family and each detail about the building. This wasn't just a fortress built to contain the arbitrary holiness of the royalty and to keep everything else away from tainting it. This was his home.

And suddenly I felt overwhelmed by all of this again. A prickly sensation washed over my skin and blood drained from my face. I could very well see now why the less repressed Seiryuu-ou got so worked up upon learning that something important had been kept from him all this time; I, too, was only now grasping just how different the world was outside my palace walls. Reading about such things in a book was one thing, but witnessing a completely different reality with your own eyes was a different story entirely. An impulsive mixture of anger, disappointment and envy hit me so hard that it made me dizzy.

“You look pale, Your Majesty,” Olivier commented then. He really noticed everything.

“Are you feeling unwell?” Genbu-ou asked me, turning around while walking ahead of us. “Do you need fresh air? We could go outside for a bit.”

“That could work,” I mumbled in reply. We had passed through most of the palace already, anyway; it was very compact in size compared to mine. When I gave it a second thought, a larger palace didn't necessarily mean it was better in any way.

* * *

Olivier helped me get dressed in my winter cloak, but I wanted to put the rest on myself.

Seiryuu-ou was now wearing a thick cloak of fur that honestly looked comically big on him; it made him look like a fat, hairy animal, and Ralf had to hold the hem up to keep it from sweeping the floors like an enormous mop. Genbu-ou didn't dress himself in black this time, but instead wore a light, soft-looking mantle and a muff. It suited him much better than the suspicious dark robe, I had to say. I remembered seeing decorative dolls of a particular kind from the North before, clad in traditional outfits, and Genbu-ou with his fluffy appearance and big, blue eyes was looking exactly like one.

“Giancarlo, tell the kitchen to prepare hot chocolate in an hour or so,” he told his knight as we followed him towards the tall palace doors.

“Sure, Your Highness.”

“And tell them to be generous with the whipped cream.” He gave Seiryuu-ou a childish smirk. “I like it more than the actual chocolate.”

The doors were opened to us, but to our surprise, we were immediately met by Genbu-ou's parents and several guards on the stairs of the portico that led to the palace. At the end of the stairs, a few feet below, stood a darkly clad man, and Suzaku-ou’s knight, as well as Suzaku-ou himself who now wore a winter coat over his black uniform. They were surrounded by four other escorts, all of whom had a solemn air around them. Suzaku-ou’s eyes were cast on the snow below, and he didn't react to us emerging through the doors; his knight, on the other hand, gave us a disapproving look that very much made me feel like we were not welcome to this scene.

I recognised the man at the front. I had seen photos of him in the papers numerous times; he was a former Suzaku-ou, the current king's grandfather. I had never had a particularly favourable impression of him, and seeing him in person didn't exactly change my opinion. He was a brooding old man with a twisted grin and an aura so dark that merely standing this close to him cast a shiver down my spine. He had a rather dubious reputation in the West; I took media's representation of people with a pinch of salt, as it always came with deliberate political influences, but nevertheless, there were not many good things I had heard or read about Hiwatari Souichirou during the course of my life.

Seiryuu-ou’s knight was the first one to react. He immediately stepped forward and locked an arm in front of Seiryuu-ou.

“Why is that man here?” he stated in a loud, stern voice.

“Hey, what're you doing?” Seiryuu-ou barked at him.

“Oh my,” the old man in front of us uttered, “what a delightful sight. All the young kings. This is an honour.” He bowed his head discreetly at us, but the disturbing grin on his face sent a message of a very different kind.

Genbu-ou's parents had been momentarily dazed by our sudden appearance. Then, his mother walked over to him and began adjusting his cloak for no reason, most likely to get between him and the Southerners. “What are you doing out here? I heard you're introducing the palace to the others.” Her voice was strained and hasty and she obviously didn't want us to be there at all.

“What's wrong, Mama?” Genbu-ou asked in response, knitting his brows at her. “That's just Suzaku-ou's grandpa, isn't it?”

“Heavens, Max, don't address him like that.”

“We were just about to take our leave,” announced the grandfather, turning his broad back to us to herd Suzaku-ou and his knight to go and make their leave. “Until next time, then. Farewell, gentlemen, the madam.” The four escorts stood up and followed without a word, and without casting a single look at us as they went.

The only one who responded to his greeting was Genbu-ou's father, a man with a laid-back disposition. The rest of us merely stood there staring as the Southerners crossed the opening in front of the palace. The golden gates were opened to them in silence and they soon disappeared from sight beyond the bridge, as if swallowed by the darkness in the distance. I didn’t see them call out their holy beasts for the journey.

“Mama,” Genbu-ou repeated more seriously, “did something happen just now? The mood’s all weird.”

“No,” she stated with haste, “we were only exchanging a few words because he came to bring his grandson home, that's all. They're very particular about their king's safety, so he wanted to accompany him personally. Too bad that the young Suzaku-ou couldn't stay with us longer.” I noticed her avoiding looking her son in the eye as she stepped away and motioned her husband to follow her back inside. “Well then, we have things to do. Don't keep our guests standing outside for too long, Max.”

“I won't, we're just gonna have some fresh air.” Genbu-ou was visibly not happy with this treatment from his mother, but began walking down the white stairs without further objections.

It somehow didn't feel appropriate to start talking about what had just happened until we were a few feet away from the palace doors, with only the six of us around again. We followed a wide, paved path free of snow, the white pillars of the palace on our right side. I noticed that it had stopped snowing at some point, so I didn’t bother wearing a hood over my head.

“That was fishy as hell,” Giancarlo commented as soon as deemed it appropriate, “the former king coming all the way from the Country of South to fetch that guy. He doesn't trust Johnny much, huh.”

“Nor the king,” Olivier added.

“They all possessed a very strange aura,” I shared my sentiments, knowing that I was the only one present with a sixth sense this strong, the only area of magic that I had actual control of. “There was something deeply sinister about it, especially the old king’s – Suzaku-ou himself is harder to read. It was... His aura was just so muddled with negative energy.”

“Ralf, you know anything about Suzaku-ou or that geezer?” Seiryuu-ou pressed his poor knight once again.

“I will leave it to your grandfather to tell you everything about them later, Your Highness,” Ralf gave his roundabout answer.

“That former king comes up in articles about the South pretty often,” Genbu-ou gave his more helpful input, “and he doesn't seem like a very pleasant person. Dude was kind of a tyrant back in the day. The South's relations with the other countries have been bad ever since, though I think they seek to improve them again. But I don't trust that grandpa, there's something evil about him still, even if he's not the king anymore. Thank Goddess he isn’t.”

“Is Suzaku-ou really okay?” Seiryuu-ou wondered. “He was quiet and kinda weird, but – I don't know, he didn't feel like a bad guy to me. At first I thought he's just rude and doesn't want to talk to us, but why did he come here in the first place then?”

“He must have been forced,” I voiced my thoughts, “maybe by his grandfather.”

“I guess attending the conference is part of improving the diplomatic relations of Nanboku?” Genbu-ou said. Nanboku referred to the North and the South – he sure knew his way around the terminology. “Maybe he wasn't actually being rude to _us_ , maybe it's because he's fighting his grandfather's will in his own way?”

“Why would he, as the king, not want to improve the foreign relations himself, though?” asked Olivier. And it was a good question.

But I felt something within me resonate with that line of thought. Going against his grandfather's orders just for the sake of not being used as a pawn... I could very well imagine it. But to actually do it, Suzaku-ou had to be an exceptionally strong person with nerves of steel. I stared at the snow below my feet and frowned.

“All of that is mere speculation, keep in mind,” Ralf then pointed out sternly. “Pardon me, but I believe you are getting ahead of yourselves. It would be better to drop this subject now.”

“Just admit you know something about it,” Seiryuu-ou gnarled.

“I do not know any more about Suzaku-ousama than you do, Your Highness.”

Maybe he was right, maybe we were getting a bit ahead of ourselves. This Ralf-person had the sort of intense presence that made none of us want to argue with him, so the conversation about Suzaku-ou did die down after his comment.

“So,” Seiryuu-ou then asked Genbu-ou once we had walked in thoughtful silence for a while, “your mom was the previous king, right? I've heard from Gramps that female kings are kinda rare.”

“They are, because royal families have always favoured male heirs. Sounds pretty boring. My Mama was great, much better than me, probably.”

“Don't say that,” Giancarlo hurried to say. “Even if the nobles favoured Her Majesty, it's too early to make such assumptions – you haven't even been officially crowned yet.”

“Right!” Seiryuu-ou complied, resting a hand on Genbu-ou's cloaked shoulder. “We've still got time to grow into totally awesome kings! We could be the best ever!”

Genbu-ou grinned at him. “That sounds like a challenge! And how do you plan to become the best king ever, Takao?”

“Well, I'd start with making siestas a thing in the East again...”

“I’ve heard of those! It’s a Southern thing, isn’t it?”

They kept chattering in this manner throughout our relatively short stroll around the palace. Our route was rather set, given that we were on a tiny island. The surroundings were strangely barren for a royal palace; considering the climate, it was no surprise that there was no garden, only statues and decorative fountains on the forecourt, and a round ice rink that I had seen on the courtyard (probably for ice skating purposes; all bodies of water in the North stayed melted year round, so they obviously couldn’t be used for skating). On the backside we walked past a beautiful pavilion, but it appeared to be the only other building on the palace grounds, and even beyond the island there was next to nothing close by, only the modest-looking town we had stopped by on our way here. Genbu-ou had told us that the capital had many historical sites and old ruins, including the one I had seen earlier, which had actually been a religious building for worshipping the North’s Goddess and not a castle like I had thought. The capital, which was called the Resting Palace, only had cultural and administrative value, and the commercial centres of the country were elsewhere.

The shoreline of the island was packed with such a thick line of trees that they created a dark wall, and upon closer look, I realised that their low-hanging branches had needles in place of leaves, or no leaves at all. It was certainly a very different kind of wall from the tall stone one surrounding Tiger Maple Palace. Then again, so was everything else in this place, but what all of my observations boiled down to was that I didn’t mind the tranquil atmosphere around Snow Glory in the least. It was very relaxing.

Soon enough, we had completed a full circle and were once again standing between the white stairs and the wide forecourt that led to the bridge and the gates. Like the paved route around the palace, this tiled opening in front of the main staircase was snowless, as if covered by a field that repelled the snow altogether. Perhaps the paths were maintained with magic as well, or maybe some sort of heating system had been constructed underneath. Two larger fountains with tortoise-shaped sculptures framed the portico on both sides, their water unfrozen exactly like the lake surrounding the palace. And yet, it was cold enough for our breath to rise up into the sky as tufts of steam.

Ralf took out a pocket watch and clicked it open. “It is getting late. If we wish to make it back for morning, we might want to prepare for leaving soon, Your Highness.”

Genbu-ou let out a surprised gasp. “You're not staying over either? What about the hot chocolate??” He added the latter bit particularly sorrowfully, I couldn’t help smiling to myself.

“We're not staying?” Seiryuu-ou himself asked, equally surprised.

“No. Your Highness must lead the parade tomorrow. Have you forgotten already?”

“Oohhh, crap.” Clearly, he had forgotten.

Ralf sighed. “But maybe we have just enough time for some hot chocolate first.”

This made both Seiryuu-ou and Genbu-ou happy. “Giancarlo, go tell them to bring it all here,” Genbu-ou commanded.

And so we sat on the white stairs to enjoy the hot chocolate, steaming hot in the cold air. Apparently, as they now told us, Ralf and Seiryuu-ou had made the long trip just by the two of them… unlike me who had had several escorts in addition to Olivier. I remembered Giancarlo's remark about Suzaku-ou's grandfather not trusting his knight...

“What kind of holy beast are you using?” I asked Seiryuu-ou to steer my own thoughts elsewhere. “You did ride one to get here, right?”

“Oh yeah, we did. Or flew it here, more like. It's a griffin.”

“Mine is a unicorn,” Olivier hurried to say, his voice soft. He was extremely fond of his Unicolyon.

“And mine's an amphisbaena,” told Giancarlo.

“Amphis- _what_?” Seiryuu-ou blurted out.

“Amphisbaena. It's a two-headed lizard, essentially. But much cooler than just a lizard!”

Genbu-ou leaned closer to me and whispered: “Sometimes the heads start fighting each other. Giancarlo likes to pretend he’s the master of that crazy critter and not vice versa.”

“I heard that, Your Highness.”

Ralf had left us to prepare for the journey home, and now he returned and brought Genbu-ou's parents with him so they could bid Seiryuu-ou goodbyes. The previous Genbu-ou pulled Seiryuu-ou into a tight embrace, her demeanor strikingly different from Suzaku-ou's earlier depart.

“Please come back any time,” she said heartily. “You are always welcome here.”

“Thanks! You should come visit Tsuno too.”

After all the formalities were over and done with, and Giancarlo had smuggled some cane pastries for Seiryuu-ou to take home with him, Ralf summoned his griffin-shaped beast in front of us and the two climbed on its back.

“I had a lot of fun!” Seiryuu-ou shouted at us, waving his arm. “We should totally keep in touch later!”

“Oh, I promise we will,” Genbu-ou replied.

And then they rose to the dark Northern sky. The griffin was a majestic creature, I had to admit, with its enormous wings powerful enough to easily lift their collective weight off the ground.

“Ah, that is quite a beautiful beast as well,” commented Olivier while admiring the griffin's disappearing figure. He really saw art in everything.

“The young Seiryuu-ou is an interesting boy, isn't he?” said the previous Genbu-ou, and I thought I heard a hint of melancholic empathy in her voice. She must have had the fate of Seiryuu-ou’s parents weighing in her mind. Albeit this was the first time I saw her in person, my impression on the former Genbu-ou was every bit as elegant as I had learnt from reading about her; she was a greatly loved monarch in the North and known for her sharp intellect and tact in business. However, as I now witnessed, she definitely had a gentle, motherly side to her that wasn't limited to her own son.

“His name is Takao, Mama,” Genbu-ou corrected her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- The country alliances’ names just come from the Japanese word touzainanboku that means the four cardinal directions together.


	7. Seiryuu-ou II

Usually I liked flying on Griffolyon's back, but let me tell you, it was goddamn freezing this time around. The beast didn’t seem to care about it, but my teeth were clattering loudly against each other and my fingers going numb fast while clutching the cloak that covered Ralf’s tall back in front of me.

“T-t-tell this chicken to at least get the hell outta this place, and as fast as it can,” I mustered the words out.

“I'm trying, Your Highness.”

I could see the faraway roofs of some larger cities of the North from up high, but mostly it was honestly just trees and rivers and snow. This was such a weird place. I didn't dislike it, but let's say that I didn't exactly understand how anyone could live out here in the middle of nothing. But I was also biased, I admit, as the East was usually praised as overall the nicest of the four kingdoms, and I had no reason to disagree. Our climate was mostly pleasantly warm, not cold like the North, not hot like the South, and not rainy like the West. And foreigners seemed to love it too, because we always had tons of tourists who wanted to see our flower trees, be it Pearlmoon or Summermoon or any other time of the year. I didn't really care for plants, but I had a feeling that I'd have a newfound appreciation for them once I was out of this fridge of a country.

I thought my brain would freeze any second. As I scanned the land with my eyes for distraction, I suddenly noticed some dark figures against the snow. We were flying rather low – I assumed it was because we would have died from the cold otherwise – so I could make out the outlines of the figures below us pretty well. It was a group of holy beasts and people riding on their backs. The realisation of the sight woke me up from my numb state in a matter of seconds.

“Ralf,” I said, tugging at his cloak, “Ralf, Suzaku-ou's group is down there. Look, he's riding some kinda lizard with his knight.” A lizard with only one head, I noted.

“So it seems.”

“Are they gonna cross the East on their way home?” The only shortcut to the South from the North was to fly across the core of the world, and only one of the beasts in the group of escorts appeared to be a bird.

I couldn't hear Ralf’s answer through the wail of the cold wind, but it sounded like a disapproving grunt. I think Griffolyon finally picked up the pace, and soon we left the party of Southerners behind us and they disappeared in the blurry distance. We were fast approaching the border, and I could already feel the warmer air from ahead that welcomed us. I still couldn't move the fingers of my clenched fist, though.

“You don't seem to like the Suzaku-ou family much,” I commented to Ralf, mostly by shouting over his shoulder.

“We should leave talking to when we arrive at the castle, Your Highness.” This time I could actually hear him.

“Is Gramps really gonna tell me everything about him? Or did you make that up to get me to shut my mouth back there?”

“Yes, he is going to tell you. Please stop shouting now, Your Highness.”

“Is he gonna teach me how to use magic and talk to Seiryuu?”

“Your Highness!”

I snorted in disappointment and turned my head to look at the scenery below us again. The ground was no longer covered in white, and I could already see the distant lights of my own country now. Geography wasn't my strong suit at all – again, I was thinking, just maybe I should know the East a bit better – but I was pretty sure that we were just above the upper-left region, Ashitareboshi. Judging from the irregularly scattered spots of light, I figured there weren't any bigger cities down there. Geez, maybe I'd start from memorising all the mansions and big cities. It was still a long way back to Tsuno in the lower-right corner of the country.

But no matter how I tried to distract myself by trying to remember the names of all the mansions of the East, I just couldn't stop thinking about Suzaku-ou, and his weird and kind of scary grandpa, and everything the others had said about them.


	8. Byakko-ou IV

It came as a surprise to me that our Western assembly was the only one staying overnight in the Snow Glory Palace. Olivier preferred not to begin the journey back so late to the day (he said that Unicolyon hated to run at night), so we would take our leave the next morning instead. I didn't mind; I wasn't exactly longing back to the West.

Once we had returned inside the palace, I found myself in front of another cup of hot chocolate. Genbu-ou had insisted on it, and I still hadn’t found a way to express that I didn’t care for sweets.

“Please do join us,” Genbu-ou told Olivier and Giancarlo who stood by the table, hesitant to sit down next to us. “There's enough for everybody.”

I was sitting opposite him, staring at the large cup full of whipped cream and marshmallows the size of my fingernails.

“Are you feeling better?” Genbu-ou then suddenly asked.

“What? Oh...” I blinked, confused for a second. The scene with Suzaku-ou's grandfather and everything else had made me forget all about my earlier nausea. “Yes, much better... Yes.” I took a deep breath and let my shoulders drop, feeling the weight of my robes pull them down. “It's just... So many things have happened in such short time... I started feeling faint in the head after a while.” I held said head in my hands. “And I don’t know if I can live our first meeting down, either.”

“I told you already not to worry about it,” Genbu-ou said, obviously humoured by my remark, “I won't use it against you. Before you know, you'll just laugh at the whole thing, and it's gonna become a really funny story to tell others.”

I didn't reply to him. I had laughed about it earlier, but the roots of my shame were just a bit too deep to even imagine telling anyone else. I decided to try the hot chocolate to have an excuse for my silence; the thick layer of white in the cup reminded me of the snow that covered this country. Drinking it was messy, and the chocolate was warm enough to feel bristly on my tongue.

I put the cup down, my eyes glued to that tuft of white.

“Do you like being a king?” I then asked.

“I do,” Genbu-ou answered, surprisingly unfazed by my sudden question. “This may sound a bit vain, but I like being important. I like getting presents and attention. I like living in this palace, and I like being able to use magic, but I also enjoy studying the means to ensure that the people of my country can lead happy lives. The nobles can be a pain in the butt to work with, and politics in general can get pretty jarring, but I've got everything a person could possibly want, so yes, I'd say I like being a king.”

I lifted my gaze from the cup to look at him across the table. Genbu-ou had a cheerful smile on his childlike face; he turned to his knight and they exchanged a silly gesture of lifted-up thumbs. Then he looked at me again, his deep blue eyes shining brightly.

His entire being was just dazzling, his aura warm and full of life.

I couldn’t understand it. How had Genbu-ou turned out like this? The more I knew about the rest of the world, the less I understood. What had gone so wrong in the West that I had to feel this inadequate in comparison? Why couldn't I be happy about being a king like this person?

The look on my face must have spoken volumes, because when Genbu-ou carried on a moment later, his voice was soft and benign.

“I can tell you don’t feel the same. But I believe that, as a king chosen by one of the four holy beasts, you have the power to bring change to the things you aren’t happy with. Think about it – you're the greatest being in your country, Rei.”

My heart skipped a beat.

Genbu-ou tilted his head innocently. “Is it okay if I say Rei? It would be a bit weird to call each other by titles, wouldn't it?”

Would it? Maybe… maybe it would. It would, but when I opened my mouth, not a word came out. It was so hammered into my soul that I was the Byakko-ou, my name was Byakko-ou, that's who I was. The only one who still insisted on calling me “Rei” was Mao. Nobody else did…

Until now.

But why was it that Seiryuu-ou could remain true to himself, as an individual who carried his birth name, and always speak his mind and still be adored by everyone; why was it that the person now sitting opposite me could happily live as Genbu-ou and still be so full of life, still be this dazzling?

Could I be the same? Maybe I didn't need to be confined inside the empty shell of Byakko-ou, but could instead be the human named Kon Rei?

“Oh, and you can call me Max. I guess this is awkward if you don't remember my name,” Genbu-ou then added in a playfully pensive tone.

“No, I did remember.” I had read plenty about the other kings, of course I knew his birth name, Mizuhara Max.

“Did you really?”

“Yes, I did!” I heard a laugh escape my mouth. I was being perfectly serious about the matter, but I couldn't not laugh at Genbu-ou's theatrical manner of expression. Just like during our conversation earlier.

Genbu-ou smiled as widely as ever himself. “That's good, then. If you’re fine with it, I'd want us to be friends. And if there’s anything I can do to help you, I want to do it.”

What a peculiar person he was.

“Thank you... Max,” I replied sincerely.


	9. Seiryuu-ou III

I tapped my left foot on the floor very, very impatiently. You may have already noticed, but I wasn't the most patient of people.

One whole day had gone by with no explanation from Gramps yet. We’d arrived home early that morning, and although I was usually a heavy sleeper, just this once I found myself insomniac, borderline possessed by anxious impatience and curiosity. I’d found myself staring at the dark ceiling of my bedroom, thinking about everything I’d seen and heard in the North, over and over. I just wanted to know the truth already!

Eventually I was lulled to sleep by my fantasies of how it might have been like to use magic, followed by dreams of shooting laser beams out of my palms. Okay, maybe magic wasn’t like that exactly.

I didn’t get to sleep for nearly as long as I would have wanted to, because that Sunday was the founding day of the city of Tsuno and I had to attend the parade celebrating it. It was an annual thing and not even a particularly interesting one, the same dragon dance on the main street every time. On the other hand, there was a lot of good food around. But the food didn’t feed my curiosity and thus wasn’t enough to satisfy me. (And that, I’d say, was extremely alarming.)

Now the parade was over, but Gramps had yet to return to the castle for whatever reason. So there I was, sitting in his study, tapping the floor with my foot, waiting. I hated waiting so much. Why couldn’t Ralf have just told me? I was absolutely sure that he’d known about this magic business all along, and it pissed me off so much.

In my boredom, I ended up examining a map of the East that hung on the wall of Gramps’ study. It was old, the paper it was printed on had already turned yellow and faded and all wrinkled from the edges. But the East hadn't really changed in a long time, so the map was still accurate in present day.

It was the same old map that I’d seen probably hundreds of times before, and all its shapes were so familiar to me, but suddenly it felt as if this was the first time I  _ really _ saw it. The first time I actually  _ looked _ at it. The East was shaped like a serpent dragon, with its assumed head at the lower right corner of the known world; Tsuno was located in a peninsula called the Horn of Seiryuu. I looked up and down the map, studying the names of the mansions and cities that were marked in posh, wavy letters all over the dragon figure.

Pride swelled in my chest for putting in the effort. I was such a considerate king. I'd really be the best ever!

The border with the North was a bumpy little curve – I remembered there being a river there to separate the countries – but the Southern border was much more randomly shaped, the corner where the dragon’s front legs fused with the bird-shaped South’s head and wings. The border was partially in the ocean, so the ancient cartographers had just chosen to draw a couple of straight lines across it and call it a day. Fair enough.

I’d now seen what the North was like (horrible, in my opinion, no offense to Genbu-ou; too cold, way too much snow, and I found myself sneezing suspiciously much after returning home), but what about the South? I tried to remember the pictures I'd seen of it before. All that came to mind, however, were the impossibly long, tropical beaches that you’d see in every holiday resort ad. The East was nice enough for me, but for some reason a lot of Easterners travelled to the South for holidays anyway. But what was normal life like in the South? I had no idea. I knew what the royal castle of the Suzaku-ou family looked like (thanks to stock images, again), it was made of stone and had round towers with sharp rooftops, like something out of a children’s fairytale book.

I hadn't even remembered that the former Suzaku-ou was such a bad guy. I guess I already knew about it, but just hadn't cared to register what the things I'd heard or read about him  _ really _ meant, because I’d never really cared enough.

After what felt like ten eternities, the door opened. Gramps finally bothered to show his white-mustached mug around. I jumped up from my seat at once.

“Finally! What took you so long?!”

Gramps was always kinda pretentious, like he had to keep up this act of a proud warrior (and Ralf had totally adopted this code of behaviour), but when he walked up to me in his solemn manner this time, the usual vigour of his theatrics wasn't there. He looked serious in the  _ actually  _ serious way.

“Takao,” he said, and even sounded dangerously serious. “I have been saving this for the day when you come of age, but it seems that the circumstances have changed.”

“I don't care, just get to the point.”

“You should care.” He turned away from me. I noticed that he was holding a stack of envelopes. “Come, let's go outside. I would rather not talk here in this dusty room. You’re going to need the fresh air.”

I decided to obey without further objections, if only because his weird behaviour and stern face had given me an ill premonition of something he was about to tell me.

I'd just wanted to know why the other kings used magic and I didn't. It couldn't be anything  _ that _ bad, could it...?


	10. Genbu-ou II

It was strictly forbidden from any journalists or other snoopers from the media to enter our palace grounds. Mama and Papa couldn't stand those people swarming around the house with their cameras and rude, boring, or otherwise inappropriate questions. They had assigned separate spokespeople to report any private events to the media, so when the news about our conference began to roll in, they were rather vague for the most part. They made the meeting sound all boring and political, apart from the juicy gossips that they just had to include to gain people’s interest.

So it came down to me to tell other nobles the details they really wanted to know.

“Please do tell me, Your Highness,” implored one of them, the young marquise of the mansion of Gāru, “what were the other kings like?”

It was one of my parents’ banquets, in other words, a party for all members of the noble families. The timing of this one, only a week after the conference, felt like they were throwing me to the lions on purpose, honestly. The great chamber of our palace had been prepared with an impossibly long table that seated fifty of these nosy nobles; its glass surface seemed to continue forever in front of me, and I was already suffocating.

This wasn't the kind of attention I enjoyed, it didn't really concern me or my family. These people were just hungry for entertainment and new rumours to spread about the foreign royal families.

The nobles didn't like me, anyway. They were all bitter over me prematurely “stealing” Genbu-ou’s title from Mama, who enjoyed enormous popularity. They simply couldn't accept her stepping aside just like that. The feeling was largely mutual, as I didn't like the nobles either – but I did my best to get along with them, at least, given that most of the actual governing of the country was in their hands. As the king, I would merely delegate the issues to them, and choose which nobles to trust. That had already proven a surprisingly difficult feat.

“They were very nice,” I answered patiently. “Seiryuu-ou could learn some manners and Byakko-ou should get out of the house a bit more often, but they're nice people. The snow confused them both a lot.” This remark earned a sophisticated laughter from the crowd.

“Aren't you forgetting one, Your Highness?” the marquise then asked.

“Suzaku-ou didn't say a single thing during the whole meeting. I don't know anything about him, Emily.”

Emily let out a surprised yet humoured gasp and raised a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my. A very shy one, isn’t he?”

“Is it true that Seiryuu-ousama curses like a sailor?” asked someone else. Who was this again? The younger brother of the Count of Rūfu, maybe.

“Like I said, he _could_ learn some manners.”

“Is it true that Byakko-ousama never takes a bath?” asked another Someone Else, whatever his name was.

It was probably supposed to be funny, but I only frowned. “Where did you even hear that from?”

“I heard that Hiwatari Souichirou showed up too,” someone suddenly said.

A heavy momentary silence engulfed my end of the table. Then, people began murmuring in low voices to each other; some turned to look at me, with the sort of careful suspicion that implied they didn't really know if they were allowed to do so.

So nosy, all of them...

“And where did _you_ hear that from?” I asked again, addressing the person making the claim. It was the Duke of Dippā; I was better acquainted with his son, Lord Michael, who was sitting on his left side, sneering into his glass of wine in his usual foolish manner. When I say “better acquainted”, I mean I knew him unfortunately well and mostly against my will.

“He was witnessed near the palace that day,” the duke said. “I was under the impression that the invitation did not consider the old king.” This duke wasn't much better than his son.

I gave him a nonchalant shrug. “He was only an escort to Suzaku-ou and didn't even set foot inside the palace.” For all I knew, anyway...

“Does it not worry you, Your Highness?” Emily asked, and judging from her tone, it certainly worried _her_. “He has targeted the other kingdoms before, has he not?”

“He's not the Suzaku-ou anymore, there's very little he can do.” I gave her the suitably neutral answer that I knew I was assumed to give, but I had my doubts about my own statement. I wished my parents would have been there to save me from this conversation, but they were seated at the other end of the unreasonably long table.

“I haven't heard much about the current Suzaku-ousama,” I could hear someone’s cautious mumble.

“Me neither,” the person sitting next to them said, “but, you know, the state of his parents... It must be hard for the young king...”

“Isn't it eerie how similar it is to Seiryuu-ousama and Byakko-ousama?”

“But you know what people say about them... That the South was involved...”

“But there's still no proof...”

I squirmed on my seat, increasingly uncomfortable. I didn't have any satisfactory answers for these people; I was supposed to lead the conversation, but I didn’t know what to say. To begin with, I was too young to even properly participate in a conversation concerning the current Suzaku-ou's grandfather's reign, and I didn't like it. Besides, the rumours they were talking about were about as old as I was, and nobody had been able to prove them true – nor false. Either way, this subject left me distressed...

The South and the East had had a petty dispute at their shared border several years back. The late Seiryuu-ou had forced Hiwatari Souichirou out of the country, and not too long after, there was a series of unexplained events that had then been blamed on the South because of the earlier dispute. The late Seiryuu-ou – Takao's father – and his wife were in an accident on their way back from a memorial service held for the late Byakko-ou – Rei's father – who had recently passed away under rather shady circumstances. Hiwatari Souichirou had given up the crown to his son – Kai's father – as a gesture that was supposed to prove his innocence and good intentions... but then the newly crowned Suzaku-ou's health suddenly deteriorated, and his reign ended after only a couple of short years. The crown passed down to his son, but being too young to rule the kingdom yet, the real power returned to Hiwatari Souichirou. Things had been rather chaotic in the South for a long while now. Not much was known about their real circumstances, though.

All of this had felt so distant to me before, just like any past event you'd read about in a book, but now it had come uncomfortably close all of a sudden. Many of the articles and reports written on these events were so heavily political in nature that it was difficult to tell what was really true, especially with the South practising censorship as they wished. I wasn't sure if the West was particularly trustworthy either. It only fueled all the wild conspiracy theories and what else here in my country.

I sighed to myself. I recalled Giancarlo once saying that he knew things had gone too far when I stopped smiling, and I was not surprised when he a second later left his position behind my seat and cleared his throat.

“Dear guests, His Highness is obviously exhausted by this topic concerning his newly-made friends. I'm sure you understanth –”

A muffled, cheerful tune pierced the air all of a sudden, not loud enough to cancel out Giancarlo's voice, but unexpected enough to make him bite his tongue from surprise in the middle of talking. I cast a half-surprised, half-guilty look down at my coat, or more specifically my pocket that had just begun ringing.

“Excuse me,” I uttered, jumped right up from my seat and hurried out of the great chamber, leaving all those annoying nobles to stare after me, dumbfounded. I couldn't see them, but definitely felt their eyes on my back. Giancarlo soon followed in my footsteps.

“I don't think that was a very appropriate exit,” he commented. Usually _he_ was the one less concerned with what was appropriate. It must have been because he had the hots for that Emily. (He had the hots for everyone he deemed pretty enough.)

“It's fine,” I said, striding up the stairs two steps a time. I got away with a lot of inappropriate behaviour for my age; sometimes I used it for my advantage and acted more childish than I actually was. It worked well with civilians who thought I was adorable, but not so much with these nobles who were against me to begin with.

“They'll go around calling you inept again.”

“I don't care, I've got better things to do.”

I stormed straight into my own bedroom, jumped on my canopy bed, and took the jingling talkpad out of my pocket.


	11. Byakko-ou V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapters from here on haven't been beta read yet, so there are probably occasional grammar mistakes, don't let those bother you :P if anyone would happen to be interested in betaing for me, feel free to say so!

The week after the conference was both the same and unlike any other week. One thing was for sure: I hadn't felt so alive in a long time. And although I had been gone for only one night, it felt strange to be back to the West. It felt… different.

At the beginning of each new week, I was delivered a folder with a list of topics to be discussed, and official documents and reports regarding notable things happening everywhere within the kingdom that week. The day’s paper, that was also delivered to me every morning, pretty much repeated those same things. Then, at noon, I would attend a weekly council with the Elders and the noble mansion officers in the throne room. My role in the council mostly just consisted of listening to what the rest had to say, or rather, being there to witness that the council took place. I didn't get to do a whole lot of talking – none, in fact, as Olivier acted as my mouth and was supposed to mediate anything I wanted to say.

The weekly councils were dull occasions that I had grown to really hate. I wasn't even sure what I was doing there; I sat there rotting on my throne like a stamp of authorisation on an envelope while the Elders, seated below me, were the ones with a say on things. They sort of pretended to ask for my (or, in practice, Olivier’s) verdict or confirmation on things, but this was a mere formality. Everything was a formality.

I hadn’t come of age yet, so I wasn't expected to know anything about anything. All the knowledge that I had (beyond the trivial things that made up my so called education), I'd acquired on my own by reading books in the palace library. Because of all this, I didn’t exactly have the means to form my own opinion on things concerning the kingdom. How would I know what was good for whom? All I could do was agree with the Elders’ and the nobles’ reasoning on such matters, and trust that they knew what they were talking about. The West had been flourishing for a long time, so I assumed they were doing a good job.

But that day, as I entered the throne room and sat down on the uncomfortable iron throne as the close-knit row of so-called important people sat on their knees at my feet, bowing their heads towards the cold floor as if cowering in fear, I thought back to what Max had told me.  _You're the greatest being in your country._ That's right – even all these self-serving people, who considered themselves so important, cowered in my presence. Because I was a sacred being, a holy figure they were obliged to worship.

And that _was_ power. For the longest time, I had thought I was nothing but an impressive but hollow statue to these people. Like a piece of art, as lifeless and powerless as a painting. That my mere existence was a formality. But I wasn’t a statue. I lived, and I breathed, like anybody else. Maybe even I myself had forgotten that I did, for a while.

After a moment of deep thought, I turned to look at the bald heads of the Elders, who now discussed investing more resources on mining in the mansion of Kuí, or so I deduced after listening for a bit. I _did_ respect these people, who possessed in-depth wisdom accumulated during their hundreds of years of enlightened lives; as long as I was a green-horned child, they were an irreplaceable support in governing the kingdom. They had supported my late father as well, and many Byakko-ous before him. You could say they were like grandparents to me, who had no family to speak of.

I wouldn't stay a child forever. I would show them. Not today, or tomorrow, or this week or even this moon, but eventually I would show them that I had a soul and a brain and a _life_ of my own. And unlike them, I had control over Byakko… or one day I would, at least.

During the rest of my stay in the Country of North, Max had told me about so many things. He told me about his magic, and all the things he could do with it: he could control water as he pleased, and turn himself invisible and hide his presence, as he had done when we first met. And he told me about the holy beast Genbu as if he was talking about a friend, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world; I had seen other people talk to their beast companions, but in the manner of talking to a pet like Mao did to Galux, and I had certainly not even once witnessed the beasts talking back to them. According to Max, it was more like telepathy, not actual human speech from the beast. And, most definitely, I hadn't even considered it a possibility to summon Byakko as I wished. I had lived under the impression that I just... wasn't capable of doing it without some sort of sacred permission. “Why not?” had Max asked, and I honestly didn't know. That’s just how I had been raised to believe.

But the first step would be to gain better control over my magic. Without getting stronger first, I would never be able to actually command Byakko, well known to be the most fickle of the four beasts in all the legends.

While returning home on Unicolyon's back the following day, I had made the decision to begin practising _qigong_ , the art of controlling one's life energy, or the qi. It was usually practised and taught under monks or masters of martial arts, but I wanted to do it all in secret in order to shock everyone later, so learning under a proper tutor in the West was out of question. Thus I resorted to my usual means: books. I was fortunate to have the generously sized royal library in my palace, full of ancient, well-preserved texts.

Nobody questioned me visiting the library as often as I pleased, especially not for the next few weeks, because I had to undergo a ritual purification period and stay inside the palace. Any journey beyond the borders of the West left me “contaminated”, or so the old sacred texts had decided, and forbid me from leaving the royal palace and being in touch with outsiders for eight weeks. This meant that I had even less freedom than usual, so I could as well pass time by reading in the library, and nobody found this peculiar whatsoever as long as I didn't sit there alone all day long. (Becoming a total social recluse would be considered suspicious.)

As I entered the palace library, the guards at the doors backed away like a pair of obedient dogs at my command. They were bowing their heads too low to even see me impatiently shoo them off.

The library was big enough to get lost in, if I didn’t know it like my own pockets, that is. And even then, I still discovered new things in it. Like the book written by Takao’s grandfather; I had to wonder how it ever made it into the palace in the first place.

Around midday, after lunch, it was time for mail to be delivered – not to me personally, but through the hands of servants who then informed me through Olivier of the things that had arrived. Sometimes they took the mail to my living quarters, if it was gifts that they deemed safe and appropriate. (All my life I'd been curious about the gifts they _didn't_ deem appropriate...) People often sent food as part of their worship, and it had to be tested first in case someone out there wished to poison me, which honestly was a fair concern. But the purification rite also included fasting during daylight, so I nevertheless wouldn't have access to edible gifts before sunset. The only food excluded from the fast was green tea, and only when prepared in the correct manner. I wasn’t sure what that manner _was_ , but it apparently existed.

So that particular day in the middle of the week, I was consuming nothing but tea for lunch as usual while lazily observing the garden through the tea room’s window. Mao was down there again, on the garden patio that she loved spending time while staying in the palace. She was whirling around in joy, wearing a new dress that had most likely just arrived in the mail; it was chest-high and light purple with a flower-patterned lace shawl. Mao was accompanied by her equally joyous handmaid, and Olivier's female page, both of whom she was apparently good friends with. I wasn't entirely sure if a page was appropriate company for a duchess who also happened to be a king's fiancée, but I didn't ever see anyone stop them from spending time together.

Sensing Olivier approaching the tea room, I turned to face the doorway. He entered the room holding a small, flat package in his hand, a troubled expression on his face.

“Your Majesty, this arrived in the mail today, and the security saw it the best to, um, obey the instructions.”

He handed the package over. It was wrapped in silk paper that said in large, round letters: _“HAND DIRECTLY TO HIS MAJESTY THE BYAKKO-OU. THIS IS AN ORDER, NOT A REQUEST, AND YOU'D BETTER OBEY OR YOU WILL FACE DIPLOMATIC CONSEQUENCES IN THE ZAIBOKU FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND YOU WILL NOT LIKE IT.”_

Raising my brows in wonder, I turned the package over and found the formal seal of the royal Genbu-ou family on the bottom, as well as a postal stamp of the North.

“It's definitely from Genbu-ou,” I said with a grin. “Thank you, you did the right thing by handing it over.”

“I figured as much,” Olivier said, ogling the package in mild suspicion.

But what could it be? We hadn't discussed sending each other anything.  I immediately hurried over to my room to open it in peace and quiet. Judging from the threatening message, this wasn’t something I should open in front of other people.  I hadn't felt such childlike excitement over opening a surprise gift in years, certainly not since some childhood birthday.

I found a cardboard package under the wrappings. It was a talkpad, a tablet computer-like device exclusively for video calls and messages; I recalled having seen the details of this device before, as it was manufactured in the West. To my surprise the glue keeping the lid shut had come off, meaning that the box had already been opened once.

I slid the tiny talkpad out of its box. It was shaped like a clam, or one of the pocket mirrors I had seen Mao use. There was also a pair of wireless earpieces in the box. I turned the device on and found that not only was there a recorded message on it, the contacts list also included all three other kings already. I flicked the screen to open the message and a hologram video of Max popped out, hanging in the air above the pad screen.

“Hi there, Rei! I hope you like my little present. Maybe you already know, but it's called a talkpad. I thought it'd be nice to have an efficient way of staying in contact, so I got all four of us one of these. I’ve heard that you’re not really allowed to hold onto one, but if you’re watching this message now, I guess my plan worked. And...” A thoughtful pause. “I'm not sure if Suzaku-ou is gonna care about his, but oh well, wishful thinking.

Well, I hope you're doing well and that we all get to talk to each other soon. You can call me any day you wish,  I'll be carrying my pad in my pocket at all times so you don't need to worry about not reaching me. See you soon!”

And he gave the camera an enthusiastic wave before reaching his hand for the screen to end the recording.

These were such handy little things, the talkpads. It was a wonderful present.


	12. Genbu-ou III

“Sorry I answered so late, I had to flee from this terrible feast with the nobles first...”

It had been three days since Rei had received his talkpad. We had been chatting through the pads every night, and I had completely forgotten to mention that I’d have to host the nobles tonight.

“Oh, you shouldn't answer if you're in the middle of something,” Rei said while I re-sized the screen to my liking with my fingertips, lying on my stomach in the bed. Giancarlo shoved himself next to me, giving Rei his idiotic grin and greeting him while I tried to elbow him away, so his greeting turned out as more of a ‘good evening, Byakko-ouucchh’.

Rei gave us a confused blink, then hid his fit of laughter behind one of his huge sleeves. Like every day when we called each other, he was wearing pure white garments that reminded me of a funeral kimono. I had read on a book that people in the West wore white to funerals.

“Good evening, Sir Giancarlo,” Rei said, regaining his usual seriousness.

“Oh Goddess, don't call him a _sir_ ,” I groaned. “You don’t want to boost his already enormous ego.”

“See, someone here knows how to address other nobles appropriately,” Giancarlo sneered next to me.

“Kings don't need to do that, don't be stupid. We're the law. We're gods.”

“And _my_ ego is supposedly big. I'm sorry that my master is a conceited brat,” Giancarlo told Rei's hologram in the most pretentious of tones.

“Just get out of here, that's an order!” I grabbed a random pillow and threw it at Giancarlo's face, successfully driving him away from my bed. “Go tell those people that I got a call from a colleague. See if they can do anything about it. And I don't want anyone to distract me.”

“Fiiine, Your Highness.”

Once I was finally alone, Rei stared at me with a curious expression. “You two are really close,” he commented. “You’re so casual with each other.”

“I guess. What's the point of staying formal when we're together all the time?” I slumped back into my lazy position on the bed, leaning my chin on my hands. “You and Olivier seemed like good pals, too.”

“Well, he is something like a childhood friend, I guess. But you’ll never catch him talking to me like Giancarlo does to you. He’s very pedantic about the post of a knight.”

“He and Giancarlo hit it off unexpectedly well, though. You’d think they’re like night and day. Anyway, how have things been?”

And we chatted away for a while. It was nice being able to just have an idle chat with another king like this; Rei told me about his plans of trying to improve his magic with old spiritual training, and I talked about mundane everyday things that truthfully didn't even feel worth talking about, but Rei seemed so fascinated to hear about anything at all, be it my piano lessons or studies – or more interestingly, sneaking out of the palace. I had been taught this noble art by Giancarlo when we were younger, something that he wasn't very proud of in hindsight. I only did it when I wanted to have a moment of freedom to myself and roam around the town (and, well, maybe also to put my magic to a test in the bustle of the town and see if anyone ever noticed me). I was always diligent about carrying out my responsibilities, and my grades were good, so nobody ought to complain if I was sometimes gone for a bit, say, right before I was supposed to meet the Duke of Dippā or so. Total coincidence, if you asked me.

Besides, recently all that the nobles were interested in was foreign affairs. Their interest in the other kings was fun at first, but it got old fast. Very fast. I didn't want to tell Rei how half of the North seemed convinced that he never took a bath. I had no idea where this urban legend had come from, but it had something to do with the West being so polluted and not having as much water as we did and stuff. I think it was supposed to be funny.

“Are you calling from outside?” I then asked to direct the conversation anywhere else.

“I’m on the veranda. The weather is nice today for a change. Look, I can show you around.” Rei lifted his pad from wherever he was holding it and walked closer to a wooden rail beside him. Then he flicked the pad to change to the back camera, and the hologram image in front of me switched to the view he was pointing his talkpad at.

I was surprised to suddenly see a serene, enchantingly beautiful landscape: an expanse of water that spread in all directions, and low, lush trees with droopy branches on the distant shore, in all the autumnal colours so characteristic to the West. Here and there on the shore were large, decorative boulders that had been placed seemingly arbitrarily, but knowing the West, they probably formed some harmonious structure as a whole. The red, wooden construction that I’d previously only seen a rail of reached across the body of water like a pillared bridge, to a gazebo that stood in the water a few feet away. On the other side of the – had he called it a _veranda_? – and the gazebo, the pool was cut off by a steep rock wall that had water streaming down its cliffs. This so-called veranda was definitely more of a pier in my book, or even a roofed bridge, and had a systematic line of round, red lanterns hanging from the ceiling. I knew enough about the Western culture to tell that they valued symmetry to the point of an obsession.

The water in the pool was surprisingly clear. When I zoomed closer by moving my fingers on the hologram, I could see some big, colourful fish swimming by below the surface. A faint current from the waterfall-like streams rippled across the water, and the white sky reflected on and off its surface like spilled paint. The white reflection on the pool was the only glimpse I caught of the colourless sky of the West; from this angle, as from most angles, the view was obstructed by the enormous wall that the scenery was trapped in. It loomed behind the otherwise beautiful scene like a menacing monolith. Rei's palace was quite literally like a prison – a beautiful one, but still a prison.

“You call that a veranda?” I had to comment in awe. “And – it’s part of your room?”

“Yes, this is my backyard. The door to my bedroom is right here. What’s wrong with it being a veranda?”

“Well, verandas here are like these balcony-like things...”

The camera jumped back to a front view, but instead of looking at the hologram’s camera, Rei’s golden eyes pointed down at the pad’s physical screen.

“Did you notice that Takao is online?” he suddenly asked. “I guess he got his talkpad, too.”

I hadn't in fact noticed, but it was true. The round icon next to Takao's name had changed from grey to green, meaning that he’d come online. No sign of Suzaku-ou having his pad yet. I wondered if there would ever be.

“I didn't! That's great – we could add him to our call, I'm dying to hear how things turned out for him.”

“Sounds good to me.”

And so I pressed the button to call Takao. A few seconds passed before he picked up, and as he did, the hologram that appeared was a close-up of his furrowed brows and nothing else.

“Huh?? Is this thing working?? Helloooo?”

“Hello. Yes, it’s working,” I said with a grin and moved his hologram image next to Rei's with my finger so I could fit them nicely beside one another. “You don’t need to stick your face so close, Takao. There. Perfect! I guess you haven't used one of these before?”

“No, I'm so– Oh, another one... Wow... It's both of you??”

“Good evening, Takao,” Rei greeted politely, bowing his head, but the corners of his mouth were tugging in ways that spoke for held laughter.

“Hi. Uh.” Takao glanced at his own pad. “Rei. Hi Rei. I asked Professor how this thing works, but I wasn't prepared for two pictures. Oh, Professor is my friend, really good with stuff like this. Machines and all.”

“What is he the professor of?” I asked, curious. My own Mama was a university professor in nanotechnology.

“Nothing for all I know, he's just called like that because he’s so smart.”

“Oh, I see.”

“But Takao,” Rei then said, moving a bit closer to the camera, “don't keep us in suspense, tell us what you learnt from your grandfather.”

“That's right!” I complied. “Are you going to learn magic now?”

But as soon as we asked, Takao's expression suddenly grew grim, as if a dark cloud had descended on his forehead. He didn't say anything at first, only shook his head, his lips pursed. Then, he let out a weary sigh.

“Gramps told me some crazy stuff,” he said in a low voice. “And it's like, mega super secret too... so make sure nobody else hears this, okay?”

I wasn't concerned about it, as I was wearing my own pair of earbuds, but Rei decided to leave the veranda just in case. Once he was back inside the house, Takao, who had averted his eyes from the camera, began talking.

“So...” He inhaled loudly before talking. “According to Gramps, I don’t have any magic whatsoever… 'cause Seiryuu's still loyal to my dad, or something. And Gramps is sure it means he's still alive somewhere out there. He told me that the reason why Hitoshi– my brother left home was to go look for mom and dad. He didn’t run away from the throne after all, he was just frustrated and wanted to do something himself, 'cause the case had gone cold when the investigators didn't find anything. Or so we were told, anyway – I don't know what's real and what's not anymore. It seems that my parents dying in an accident was a lie.”

I opened my mouth but closed it again, unable to form any coherent words, other than a “what?” after a short, confused silence. It was a well known fact that Takao’s parents had passed away, after all.

“I don't know either, dude,” Takao breathed out, flailing his arms in frustration. “All of a sudden Gramps is telling me everyone's been lying to me all this time. To keep my mouth shut so nobody would find out the truth. And he’s saying it's all Suzaku-ou's grandpa's fault, and I'm just finding it all so hard to believe.”

“Slow down a little,” Rei told him, “what exactly did he call that old man's fault? And how is this related to your magic?”

“He... Well, you know, a lot of… bad stuff happened within a short time back in the day. Gramps is saying it's, it’s all that guy's fault.” Takao stuttered a little and threw a subtle look sideways. The uneasiness in his eyes gave me a hunch of what this ‘bad stuff’ he mentioned was: the same old rumours that the nobles had also brought up earlier during the banquet. “And he thinks the geezer's been keeping my dad somewhere all this time. As a hostage. And now my brother's gone missing too. I know the old Suzaku-ou was evil and all but... Why would he do that...?”

I looked at Rei, who gave me a clueless look in return. We let Takao gather his thoughts for a minute.

“Could you start over from the beginning?” I then suggested patiently.

“Okay. So. Gramps said,” Takao began again, palming his neck with a troubled face, “the magic is all up to the holy beast, you know? Since it's them giving us the powers? Or like, it’s the beasts’ powers to begin with, so they get to choose who to pass the magic on to. You said so yourself, Max, that Genbu chose you. My brother was the same as me – no magic. If my dad was dead, Seiryuu would have passed the powers down to an heir, 'cause its old vessel would be gone and all so it’d have no choice. But neither of us inherited it – and nobody else knew about this, not even me. Maybe Hitoshi did and that’s why he left. Gramps kept it a secret because he thinks it proves that the story about an accident is false... and he says that the former Suzaku-ou came up with the lie and is keeping dad somewhere, 'cause nobody's ever found him.. and... Ugh, I don't get it, it's all so weird! I’m so weirded out by this all. Gramps just suddenly saying that my dad’s actually alive… And mom, too...”

“Is there any evidence of the former Suzaku-ou being involved in all this?” Rei asked. “Implying that he did something like abducted the late Seiryuu-ou years ago is a rather serious accusation.” I agreed; it was a bizarre story that seemed to heavily rely on hypotheses and sounded like the sort of conspiracy theory bogus that our nobles so loved. I was surprised, though, to hear that even the old Seiryuu-ou advocated it. He had once been Seiryuu’s master himself, so it was true that he’d definitely know of the dragon’s whims better than any of us.

“I think Gramps considers him his arch nemesis,” Takao replied. “They never got along well, and then they had that fight when the geezer tried to claim some piece of land as the South’s or something. And Gramps says losing that fight made him batshit crazy, and then he… well… you know.”

Takao left the rest of the thought hang ominously in the air, and I could see him glance sideways again, probably at his hologram screen of Rei. I had read about their parents’ cases during my studies, and the circumstances around Rei’s father’s death were suspicious to say the least: he had very obviously been violently murdered, and his mutilated corpse wound up at the royal palace as if it were some gruesome prank. So apparently Takao's grandfather accused the former Suzaku-ou for it, because it was equally shady with the disappearance of Takao's parents. I had read that the late Byakko-ou's murder had been wrapped up by blaming it on some known enemies to the throne without any real evidence. I understood from all this that Takao's grandfather was blaming both incidents on the former Suzaku-ou. That would make the old man’s criminal record pretty outrageous.

But if Takao's parents really weren't in an accident, what had happened to them? They had disappeared on their way to the late Byakko-ou's memorial service, and what Takao was now saying implied that Hiwatari Souichirou had somehow kidnapped them on the road. The two incidents did happen suspiciously close to each other, but was there any proof of them being connected to each other? It was a bit much to blame the former Suzaku-ou for both Rei’s father’s death and Takao’s parents’ disappearance just because he and the former Seiryuu-ou had had a dispute... What reason would he have had to commit such crimes?

“Isn't he jumping into conclusions by assuming that your father being alive means he was kidnapped?” I asked quietly. “I mean... Maybe there really was an accident, but he survived somehow?”

“And was never, ever found? Despite five years of meticulous searching? And he’s never once tried to contact us in any way? And my brother –”

“I think,” Rei interrupted Takao who was growing more aggravated each second, “that the old Seiryuu-ousama knows what he's talking about... I'm sure he knows the situation better than anybody else.”

It was a fair point. He had had over ten years to look into his missing son's fate. And Takao's brother had also been out there, looking for their parents all this time, with no success whatsoever; by now, Kinomiya Hitoshi must have turned every single stone along the road that their parents supposedly took that day. And chances were that at least some of that route passed across the Country of South... But on the other hand, they could have gotten lost in the Core of the world, which also separated the East from the West. Even if they had survived somewhere in the Core, nobody could help them out there. The Core was helplessly uninhabitable to humans. This, in fact, sounded much more likely to me.

“So, you think the old Suzaku-ou is keeping your father locked up somewhere or what?” I wondered aloud. “But what’s the point? Revenge? For this long?” It couldn’t be easy to just make human beings (who could use magic and summon a holy beast, nonetheless) disappear like that. How would it benefit him in any way? Was it even possible in the first place?

On the other hand… this _was_ about the notoriously corrupt South, a land where arguably almost anything was possible.

“Gramps thinks he could do it,” Takao said, his expression somber. “It sounds sick to me. So sick…”

None of us three had any answers to the remaining questions. My eyes deliberately drifted to the fourth name on the talkpad's contact list.

Did Suzaku-ou know about his grandfather’s doings, and what was real and what was not? He _must_ have known. And if his grandfather really was behind all of this – if he was a murderer, a kidnapper, and who knows what else – what kind of world did the current Suzaku-ou live in?

And how could _we_ ever find this all out?

I didn't notice at first, but we all had been quiet for a while. And it just so happened that all our thoughts lingered around the same person now.

“I wanna go see Suzaku-ou,” Takao then said.


	13. Seiryuu-ou IV

“Absolutely not,” was Ralf's immediate answer.

Not like I’d expected any better. It was clear to me by now that Gramps wanted to keep me as far away from the royal Suzaku-ou family as possible, and Ralf was under his direct orders.

“What am I supposed to do then?!” I yelled in response, a question that was now constantly on my mind. What should I do? What _could_ I do? One thing was for sure: I refused to keep sitting in the castle like an idiot who knew nothing about anything. I felt both ashamed and deceived. I felt lots of things, really.

“You don't need to do anything, Your Highness,” Ralf said, and it was exactly the answer I didn't want to hear but was sure to get anyway. “You should stay here and –”

“I can't! How could I just stay here doing nothing?! Maybe you and Gramps shouldn't have lied to me all my life if you wanted me to stay still!” I huffed and crashed on a sofa, wishing it could swallow me right up so I'd never have to see Ralf's mug ever again.

I hadn't believed it at first. Nobody would have believed something like that out of the blue – it changed everything I knew about my own family and myself. But the letters that Gramps had shown me, written by Hitoshi along the years and describing his travels while looking for our parents, were definitely real. He'd been frequently reporting his whereabouts to Gramps, up until about a year ago when the letters had abruptly stopped coming.

And that wasn’t the end of it. After telling me the truth, Gramps had led me to an old weaponry chamber on the basement floor of Cherrywood, a place I’d never been to and hadn’t really even known to exist. Along with tons of other weapons, what was stored in that chamber was  the family heirloom sword, Ryuushinken. The very sword I’d been wanting to wield myself for so long. It stood there in its lone stand at the otherwise hollow end of the dark, musty cellar; it was disappointingly ordinary for a legendary royal artefact, apart from the azure gemstone embedded into its pommel, but even the gem looked a little off, as if it had lost its shine.

Because Seiryuu was sealed into that sword, nobody but its master, the true Seiryuu-ou, could unsheath it. That’s supposed to me, of course, but I tried, I tried and tried and tried again to get that stupid sword out, with all the power I could muster, and almost broke my wrist in the process. It didn't even budge. After a while, I gave up on brute force; I tried wrapping my fingers around the sword’s hilt and only focused my mind on the sword and my fingers and the sensation of that hilt against my skin the best I could, in hopes that it’d somehow move with the magic that I was supposed to have somewhere within me. But nothing happened. No magic. That sword's nothing but a piece of old metal stuck in its scabbard, gathering rust in an old cellar.

It made me feel so sick and tired. I was disappointed and angry and also sad in a way I hadn't been in years, not since the day Hitoshi had left.

I wasn't the real Seiryuu-ou. I was nothing but a lukewarm substitute, the last resort because both my dad and brother were missing and the East just needed _someone_. Not that I ever really did anything a king was supposed to do, anyway. I had never done anything of the sort; Gramps was basically still the ruler of our kingdom, and it was reasonable that I had to listen to him when he didn't want to let me meddle with the South in any way.

But the situation absolutely mortified me. I wanted to know why the old Suzaku-ou would have kidnapped my father or done any of those other things. It was no longer a mystery to me why my brother had chosen to get up and leave; after learning the truth, the idea of doing the same grew more appealing to me each passing day. But I knew that Gramps would never let me. And it was practically impossible for me to get away from Ralf. I didn't even have a holy beast of my own to run away with. Man, I was one pathetic king, so pathetic compared to Max and Rei.

I had been momentarily happy and relieved knowing that Hitoshi hadn’t abandoned the throne out of being a coward, but now I felt a different sort of anger towards him for having known the truth and never telling me anything about it. Why didn’t he tell me why he left that day? Was I really this unreliable to everyone?

I had a hard time wrapping my head around all the political stuff, like Kai's grandfather scheming to improve the countries' relations or whatever, so it was much more natural for me to focus on things I _could_ grasp. I wanted answers more than anything, and I wanted to know what Kai thought about all of this. (I'd decided on using his birth name too, because I wanted to treat him like everyone else and hated using titles anyway.) Rei had said something about Kai’s aura feeling really evil or whatever, but I just couldn't take him for a bad guy. And the more I thought about him, the less intimidating he felt to me. There was something sad about him, even. He had to be under his own grandfather's orders, and he'd lost his parents like me – it wasn't clear to me how, though, and I’d need to look that up too – and had no choice but to obey. I didn’t hold his antisocial behaviour against him anymore.

All of this made me think, for some reason, that Kai had to be horribly lonely. Maybe he was like me after all, and his grandfather didn’t tell him anything either. If his grandfather controlled him, it was possible that he wasn't allowed to have the talkpad either.

Professor had taught me how to make pre-recorded messages and send them to others. So I recorded a small message for Kai, just in case it one day reached him. Just in case. I didn't say much in it – it's not like there was much to say when I didn't know anything about him, but it felt worth the shot. Professor was there with me to record it, although he was too nervous to say much anything, but I would have felt really stupid talking to a flat piece of plastic in an empty room all alone. I didn't really understand computers and stuff anyway, we weren't crazy about that in the East. (Except for Professor, of course. He loved all technology from the West; that's where most of it was made for all I knew, and I only knew it because Professor never shut up about the West. I wondered how he’d feel about me hooking him up in a call with Rei sometime… Maybe they could bond over Western gadgets.)

My message was like this:

“Hello, hi there, Kai! Is it okay if I say Kai? I don't really like titles. I'm Seiryuu-ou, but I'd rather be called Takao. And this here is my buddy, his name is Manabu but everyone calls him the Professor! And that’s not a title, it’s just a nickname, okay? Those are totally different from each other. Anyway! Max got us these awesome talkpads and they're pretty fun to use, so I hope we can talk to each other a lot with these. Because, you know, I don’t really know anything about you – I know a lot of things about Max and Rei already, so it feels unfair. I dunno if you like this kinda stuff, but I'll be here waiting for you anyway. It'd be cool to talk about stuff. Yeah. I really wanna get to know you, so think about it. I don't wanna make this too long so you won't get bored of watching in the middle, so I'll stop here. Bye!”

It wasn't the best message in the world, because I had a bad habit of getting sidetracked, and I wasn't going to spill the beans about all the heavy stuff in front of Professor, because it had nothing to do with him and was supposed to be all secret anyway. Max and Rei were different since they were fellow kings, but it didn't feel good to get outsiders involved. Professor was a great guy and a good friend, he really was, but, you know. Besides, I didn't really know how to approach Kai yet, so this was probably the best I could do.

I spent a lot of time with Professor that week. The castle had started feeling a bit suffocating to me; I wasn't even excited about Gramps making vague promises of starting swordplay practice with me soon. Maybe I would get excited about it sometime later, but right now I couldn't, knowing I wouldn’t be doing it with Ryuushinken anyway and all. I didn't really even want to _see_ Gramps. But I did let Ralf follow me around like a dog, because that’s what he’s supposed to do, and he didn't annoy me so much when I mostly just ignored him. I knew that he was just doing his job. Poor Ralf and his boring life.

While Professor didn't need to know all the details, he helped me look up information about a lot of stuff when I expressed interest in them, and I'm fairly sure he didn't find it strange – after all, I'd just travelled outside Tsuno for the first time ever, so I thought it natural that I wanted to know more about the world now. I couldn't get answers to the questions I most wanted answered, but at least I could look up written history and maps and things about the other kings and all that. It was a little hard feigning disinterest whenever I looked up stuff about Kai’s grandpa, though, because even seeing pictures of the guy’s face was making my blood boil just a bit.

I noticed soon that hardly anything had been written on Kai himself. His father had only been the Suzaku-ou for two and a half years before a medical condition had forced him to give up the title to his only heir. The news talked about him being in hospital care, so I assumed he wasn't dead, but the crown had nevertheless been passed down. And Kai had said that he could use magic... Something about his case was different from mine, then. Maybe all the holy beasts were a bit different, too, since Max had said that Genbu personally chose him. Maybe the beasts all had their own personalities and preferences for kings and all. I'd never considered the holy beasts to be concrete creatures; I'd only thought of them as symbols or such. How weird but cool that it actually wasn’t the case.

When I really thought about these things, I found myself feeling pretty envious of Max. He could summon a holy beast and use magic, and he wasn’t under the orders of his parents, both of who were alive and well. I bet his parents never kept important stuff from him, either. And he was good friends with his knight, who wasn't a goddamn killjoy like Ralf at all. Really, the more I thought about it, the more jealous I started feeling, and I'm not the kind to be jealous over other people at all, so it made me feel kinda petty.

I brushed the feeling under the rug, not wanting to think about it anymore. _At least I’m not living in the North_ , I told myself. Maybe some factors balanced others out like this.

The only things I could find out were that the Suzaku-ou was also the supreme commander of the Southern army – which sounded bizarre to me, when the most responsibility I had ever been given was putting a stamp on an envelope – and that Kai never gave interviews for media. Any news or articles concerning the Suzaku-ou in any way consistently talked about Kai’s grandpa or some bishop guy who was like the grandpa’s personal advisor or something, and never about Kai himself. It was... puzzling. Even if Kai avoided reporters, there ought to be _something_ written on him, right? Was he not liked by people in the South? I guess I was kind of popular in the East, and I had the impression that both Rei and Max were well liked in their own countries, too. Hell, Rei was actually worshipped like a god in the West. But Kai seemed absolutely non-existent in any writings about the South. It really was a bit weird.

I didn't want Professor to realise how caught up with stuff from the South I was, so I decided to drop the information hunt after a couple of days and instead told him that I wanted to learn more about the East. Despite all this new crap, I hadn't forgotten about wanting to become a better king... if I even _was_ the king, really. I didn't fully understand how I was feeling about it, myself – one moment I hadn’t cared about being the Seiryuu-ou, but when I found out that I actually _wasn't_ , I took it as offense somehow. I guess being the Seiryuu-ou had become a larger part of my identity than I’d realised. It was like a subconscious thing, I don't know. A lot of things didn't make sense anymore.

But the bottom line was that I wanted to start studying my own country with Professor's help. I actually had official tutors for stuff like this, but they just weren't any fun and didn’t let me look up whatever I wanted, you know? A friend was much better. I wanted to know what the country’s like in practice, not about its history and economy. I think Professor was a little proud about getting to share his own knowledge with me, too; he knew a lot about the different mansions, and what he didn’t know, we looked up together.

It was now two days after my call with Max and Rei. I left Professor’s house as the Sun began to sink lower, preparing to lay to well-earned rest after a hard day’s work, and made my way back to the castle. Ralf, who'd been obediently waiting outside, tagged along like a scenthound. It was a bit chilly outside; the storm season must have been approaching again. I liked storms, but apparently they also caused damage around the country every year, especially in parts where houses weren’t that sturdy. I’d never known about it, and it sounded sad, but I couldn't help wondering why people didn't just build stronger houses already.

On my way home I met Ralf's squire Mihael, who was scrubbing some armour on the main castle’s foreyard. Mihael was a cool guy, friendly and laid-back, and we got along great, but Ralf treated him way too coldly most of the time. Ralf was such a haughty bastard sometimes, he was all about that traditional master-and-servant etiquette and never considered lesser nobles his friends, not even Mihael who was his apprentice.

I wished that Mihael had been my knight instead. That would've been so much fun. But becoming a royal knight didn't just happen with a snap of fingers, and replacing a knight in their position was even harder, and rare for all I knew. What a damn pity, seriously.

I returned to my rooms to get ready for dinner, and noticed a green light flashing on the talkpad that I'd left on my bed earlier. Professor had explained all the pad’s functions to me, but I still didn't remember very well... What did a green light mean again? That someone'd called me while I was gone? Maybe it was Max, and I was momentarily sad about the thought of missing an opportunity to chat with him, but when I flipped the pad open, there had been no incoming calls. Instead, I had received a message. From Kai.

My heart probably stopped for a minute there. I stared at the talkpad in disbelief.

_Kai replied to my message! He saw it!_

I was in such euphoric hurry to see his response, I almost forgot to grab those ear things that Max had sent with the talkpad. (Why were they so small? I’d already managed to lose them in my room once.) The hologram screen appeared, and there he was, none other than Kai the Suzaku-ou.

He wasn't looking at the camera, and his face was mostly obstructed by his long fringe. For several seconds, nothing happened on the video.

Then, Kai spoke.

“Why?” he asked in a low voice, not louder than a murmur. “Why do you want to know more about me? I don't think this is a good idea.” The latter sentence sounded like he was mostly saying it to himself. After another short silence, he suddenly moved his eyes to the camera, looking straight at me as if to pierce my soul through the hologram message.

“You shouldn't get involved with me.”

And then the message ended.


	14. Byakko-ou VI

Max and I called each other often. It quickly became part of my daily routine to call him every night as i returned to my quarters after the day’s worth of attendable duties and existential crisis. Normally I’d be having evening tea with Olivier in my tea room, but had asked him to leave me to my own devices during the purification period. I wasn't sure what he’d say if he found out about the talkpad, and I didn't have the courage to find out. He was... well... rather conservative, or he at least respected tradition to the point that I didn’t feel like arguing about it.

Sometimes the calls with Max were short, brief exchanges of greetings, but other times we kept talking until I could see the sky change shade and realised it was early morning already. No matter which topic came up, we both had so much knowledge and so many thoughts to share. We’d talk about our kingdoms and reflect on all their differences, and about other nobles, and history, and so many other things. I learned so much more about the North from him, about its mansions and cities; I was surprised to hear that they never built their houses very tall, but instead had cities built on lakes that had waterways in place of streets, and in the uppermost mansions, some cities were even built underground to shelter them from the cold. And I told Max about the numerous old traditions of the West, but was a little ashamed to admit that I wasn't as knowledgeable about my own kingdom as Max was about his. I was also completely useless when it came to discussing popular culture. Max really knew a lot about the world in general, or that's how he appeared to me, at the very least. It was part of his education, whereas mine was only concerned with the Western etiquette.

Max also showed me more of his magic. He would wrap water around his fingers like a ribbon and cause tiny whirlpools to appear, or create bubbles out of thin air. And he always wore the gemstone of Genbu around his neck, embedded into a pendant that he wore under his clothes. The pendant had belonged to his mother before him, and many others before her. I didn't have a family heirloom like this; Byakko's gemstone was kept in the royal temple of worship, and for all I knew, it had always stayed there. The only times I had even seen it were during conducting rituals in the temple.

The gemstones, which were said to be made of a mythical mineral harder than diamond, were a source of a lot of folk legends in both countries, as we came to realise together as we talked about them. Most of the tales were rather dark, and many revolved around the gems bringing people bad luck, or told stories of them breaking and causing all sorts of calamities. There was an ancient Western folk legend about the gem of Byakko having been broken once in the past and causing a storm so massive that it wiped out the entire capital, which was then re-built from metal into its current form. It was also a common tale that gathering the gems together would give their wielder all sorts of miraculous powers. Legends and myths were a separate thing from fairy tales, though; they were treated with a certain air of holiness that mere tales didn't have. The West seemed to treat legends a whole lot more seriously than the North did.

I didn't remember ever having talked this much in my life.

Each night after calling Max, I spent a while meditating and practising qigong before going to bed. I had already made steady progress, and the deep state of focus came more easily to me now. The more I heard about Max’s magic, the better I felt like I could concentrate on my own, whether the knowledge had any real effect or only acted as a placebo. I hung onto each thing he said, giving them the physical form of a guiding rope in my mind as I seated myself on my bedroom floor. I closed my eyes and focused my mind on magic, the faint power I could feel flowing through my veins, cool against my warm blood. But just being aware of it wasn’t enough. I needed a stronger connection.

At times I managed to reach a trance-like state, only to be awakened by a sudden jolt of electricity. It was startling at first, until I realised that it came from within myself. After a few attempts ending this way, I deduced that it had to be the magic at work, poking its head from its long slumber and attempting to run rampant within my body. The realisation only made me more determined to master it sooner than later, I didn't yet know what exactly I could do with it, but Max had told me how his abilities came to him very naturally, so it didn't cause me much worry. What I already had discovered was that magic sharpened all of my six senses.

I still couldn't imagine summoning Byakko like it was nothing – even less actually conversing with it. The thought alone still roused fear in me. Byakko was a divine beast with a will of its own, and I was well aware of the myths about it refusing to obey an incompetent master. Many such stories were told about previous Byakko-ous, who had failed to become competent kings. I didn't yet have the confidence to even consider calling Byakko out for my own purposes. Max tried to be understanding, but he talked of Genbu as a friend of his and was convinced that Byakko would be my friend as well. Reality couldn’t possibly be that simplistic, I could tell by instinct that Byakko wouldn't be as obedient as Genbu. Maybe all the kings had an instinct like this because of the connection with the beasts.

I guess Max had sort of become my tutor in magic. It was strange how he looked so much younger than me, but was far more knowledgeable and competent in many ways. He did have his naïve side, born from being pampered by his parents in a loving home, but that naïvety didn't equal stupidity. Rather, it showcased in Max as innocent daring, occasional spontaneous mischievousness, and infinite enthusiasm for life, none of which overshadowed his intelligence. It made talking with him fun and energising. He made every day a little different, which was something that I didn't get to experience much in my repetitive, monotonous life. That life didn't feel quite so grey anymore, now.

Of course, we both were concerned about Takao. But the discussion about him had reached a dead end, as nobody was none the wiser about the matter. Max was reasonably skeptical in face of lack of evidence; while I had faith in Kinomiya Ryuunosuke, Takao's grandfather, I wasn't sure what to think of the whole ordeal, and could hardly point any fingers at people with my lacking information on the circumstances of the South. But there was definitely this _something_ , something ominous about it all. I could feel it in my backbone, and would rather not be involved with the royal Suzaku-ou family in any way. Sometimes when I lay to sleep late at night, I suddenly recalled the disturbing emanation of the Southerners’ auras, dark and deep like a well with no bottom, and felt a stir of fear over the memory alone.

In the end, both Max and I were in silent agreement about not wishing to meddle with the matters of the East and the South. It's not like I could have done anything even if I wanted to, not from inside the walls of my palace.

 _Zap._ All of these thoughts had disturbed my concentration, and then I was violently snapped out of it again on my bedroom floor.

 

* * *

 

A couple of weeks went by.

One day, Max proposed wanting us four kings to start meeting regularly. He suggested that we could gather for a conference in the North once every moon. He was obviously very invested in the idea himself, his eyes shining with that childlike excitement so characteristic to him as he presented the idea to me, and already certain of the idea’s success. And, he said, if Suzaku-ou happened to agree to meet the rest of us as well, we’d surely be able to get more information out of him. He had probably already discussed it with his parents.

I averted my eyes from Max’s expectant excitement. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell him about the truth of the purification period – that I wasn’t allowed to step outside the palace for eight weeks each time I left the country. But now I couldn’t avoid it anymore, and it wasn't very pleasant to betray Max's expectations like this.

I’d never thought much anything of the rite myself. There had always been similar consequences every time I left the royal mansion, and I had nevertheless spent the majority of my life inside Tiger Maple and felt safe and comfortable doing so, up until recently anyway. And whatever I might have thought of it now, the West had deep respect for the rite as part of this whole ancient Byakko religion thing, so I had to do it.

But to Max, this information came as not only a disappointment, but an utter shock.

“ _What?_ ” he uttered, and all that innocent radiance of his being vanished at once. He stuttered in stupefied confusion as he continued: “Are you saying you're not allowed to go _anywhere_ _at all_? For _eight weeks_? Wow, that's, that's not normal, Rei, that's – that’s… just… plain horrible. It’s so inhumane, how could they do that to you? To their king?”

“Well, as a king, I'm not exactly…” I was never treated as a human. This was nothing new to me.

Max’s complexion had gone pale, even paler than it was by nature.

“This isn't right,” he muttered quietly, mostly to himself; and drooping his head, visibly upset, he kept talking under his breath: “That's really messed up, it's just not right... Locked inside for _two moons_ for no reason... That's terrible... Oh no, Rei... It's like they're holding you captive...”

I fiddled with my white sleeves, my own words coming out as a mere mumble, too, as I spoke. “I thought you already knew I hardly leave the palace.”

“I didn't know you are _literally kept from leaving_.” He looked positively sick. It was such a horribly unfitting expression on his face.

“Maybe we could hold triannual conferences?” I suggested half-jokingly, but couldn't muster much humour into my voice. An uncomfortable, tight sensation had suddenly clutched my chest, and it was stalling my breath in my throat, making it difficult to talk.

Max lifted his gaze to me, his blue eyes wide and sad.

I knew this wasn’t my own fault, but felt a pang of guilt regardless…

...Or was it? Was it my own fault, for being too passive and not questioning things as much as I should have? If Max was in my position, would he be sitting around just allowing people to close him up inside the palace like this and obediently waiting for them to let him out?

Unable to look at him straight, I looked down at my hands.

“It’s not the conferences I care about,” Max then said. “I was hoping we could see each other again soon... but I guess it's not that simple...”

I didn't really know how to respond. I noticed that my palms had gone sticky from sweat.

I took a deep breath and turned to look at the window beside me. The scenery beyond the latticed panel was bathing in the usual, unimaginative grey of the West. The pond was surrounded by a lingering misty haze that seemed to swallow the faint light of the lanterns and tear it apart.

“I wish I could go back to the North, too,” I then said after a pause. “I really wish I was there instead of this place.”

“Really?” Max asked in surprise. I was glad to hear even a slight elevation in his voice.

“The sky felt so vast up there. Here in Tiger Maple, I can't even see the sky without climbing to a tower to go look at it. And even if I did, it looks so ugly.”

“But didn’t the cold bother you?”

“It's cold, but the air was so clear. I was skeptical about it myself at first. To tell you the truth, I didn't even want to attend the conference. I would ask Olivier why I had to go up there, of all places. But that was all just stupid of me. Besides, feeling the cold means I'm...”

 _Still alive_ , was what I thought, but zipped my mouth mid-sentence without allowing the words to come out. Not to Max, who seemed so easily shaken. Those morbid words got caught in my throat, a weighty silence filling their place as I bit my lower lip.

“That's true,” Max then complied. I could tell his heart wasn't really in the reply; maybe he hadn't even noticed I never finished my sentence. When I looked at the hologram again, Max was looking elsewhere himself and appeared contemplative and distant, lost in his own thought. At least he didn't look as sad anymore… but the uncomfortable weight on my chest remained, making it difficult to breathe. I felt an anxious tingle under my skin.

A silent minute or two passed by. I didn’t know what to say, or whether I should have said something to begin with, when Max snapped out of his daze, blinking as if remembering where he was all of a sudden.

“Wait,” he said a tad alarmed, “I didn't notice it was getting so late.”

It really was late. I was already surrounded by the looming dusk, and even the haze outside was no longer visible through the window beside me.

“And Giancarlo is doing some kinda pantomime at my door,” Max added, casting a squint somewhere beyond the talkpad’s camera. “I think he’s trying to tell me something.”

“It could be something important,” I replied, both disappointed and relieved. “Let's call it a night, then.”

“I doubt it, I bet he just wants the remains of my snacks. But yeah. Good night. And... hang in there, Rei, okay?”

Max flashed me his usual smile. It was the same smile that I had seen so many times by now, but for some reason, just that night alone, seeing it hit some nerve within me particularly hard.

“Good night.” I bowed my head at him out of habit, right before the hologram image broke into a million tiny particles and vanished, as if it had never even existed.

I pressed a button to turn the talkpad off, leaned back, and looked down at my own hands again. They were peeking out of the white sleeves, trembling uncontrollably. I tried clenching my fists to stop the trembling, but couldn’t control my fingers.

The painful lump in my throat made my eyes burn. I blinked once, and my vision was immediately blurred by pathetic tears, all the pent-up emotions forcing their way out through my eyes. I buried my face in the sleeves in a silent fit of self-pity, as well as the pain of the pity reflected in Max’s eyes as he had stared at me through the hologram image.

 

* * *

 

The next morning before breakfast, I called Olivier over to my Bìxiùwu Hall quarters and ordered him to inform everyone that I was feeling unwell, would spend the day resting in my bedroom, and didn't want anyone to disturb me. It was Monday again, so I postponed the week’s council until later. Olivier left me the folder concerning the kingdom's affairs and then walked out, as my order also concerned him.

I had the servants bring me the morning tea to Bìxiùwu, and once alone and feeling calm enough, I sat down on the carpet and crossed my legs under me. I shut all of my senses and blocked the burdens of the physical realm from my mind, allowing myself to gradually slip into the comfort of oblivion.

This was what ascetic monks practised in my country: the art of enlightenment and getting in touch with one’s soul. It supposedly took years to learn, but I had already become quite skilled at it myself. Perhaps it was because of my closeness to the heavens as I was. Or maybe it was because of my magic… assuming that the two weren’t one and the same thing.

I sat still on the floor, completely disregarding the pass of time and anything and everything surrounding me. I kept myself strictly hyper-focused on that prickling sensation of magic under my skin, determined not to let it overwhelm me or jolt me awake this time.

Slowly, very slowly, I could feel the flow of the energy being channeled into my toes and fingertips.

Then, after an indescribable period of time that could have either been five minutes or two hours, I opened my eyes, my senses sharpened to the extreme, and brought my hands in front of me. I watched calmly as my hands gave off a faint, bright green glow. I saw a few stray sparks shoot through the air,, and then, there it was: a visible, neon green electric current that flowed from one hand to another. It flashed into view, then disappeared, then flashed again in the rhythm of my heartbeat.

But a second later, I suddenly found myself staring at one of the lanterns in the ceiling.

Blinking in confusion, I realised that I was lying on my back on the carpet. As I drew in a ragged breath, the air had a burnt smell to it that stung my nose.

I must have collapsed from over-exerting myself with magic. Maybe it had been too early still, after all.

A short moment later, I heard the heavy thud of the door knocker by the entrance.

“Excuse me for disobeying your orders, Your Majesty, but _what on Earth was that?_ ” said Olivier’s voice from the other side.

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I guess I had caused _something_ to happen just now, though nothing in the room had taken any damage for what I could see.

“What was what?” I asked back in genuine wonder, got up from the floor, and wobbled over to the front doors of my quarters, a bit faint and covered in sweat.

Behind the doors stood a wary-looking Olivier. Once he saw me, his eyes first widened in horror; then he burst out laughing, yet looked very self-aware of the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be laughing. I had never seen him wear such a nonsensical expression before.

“ _What have you done, Your Majesty?_ Look at yourself!”

Puzzled, I turned to look at a mirror that covered one of the walls. My hair was standing up in ways that definitely defied the laws of physics, and my braid had partially come undone, the long strands now resembling the tail of a very poofy cat. My forehead, cheeks and nose, as well as the front of my previously white robes, had gone black as if something had exploded on my face. Like my own magic, for example.

“I heard something go boom, and – but there's nothing in here that could explode.” Olivier seemed to realise this only as he was saying it aloud, and began scanning the hallway of Bixiùwu with his eyes wide open.

“I don't really know,” I said truthfully. “I, um, wanted to try out my magic.” It was better than admitting that I had smuggled in something that could explode.

“Oh.” Olivier's expression hardened with displeasure in a matter of seconds. “Oh no. Your Majesty, is that why you wanted to be left alone?”

I nodded. I wiped my face with my fingers and watched them stain with dark grey. What a mess.

“I’ll go get the baths ready,” Olivier concluded dismissively and turned his back to me. But before leaving his spot by the door, he continued: “I didn't know you were using your magic, Your Majesty.”

“You’ve heard me talk about it before,” I pointed out. It was true, Olivier had been there as we discussed magic for the first time back in the North.

“I only heard you express interest in Genbu-ousama's magic.”

“Just go already, I feel gross,” I hurried him, very much not interested in being lectured by him like a child.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” With a bow, Olivier left again.

Sometimes ordering Olivier around felt just as good as it had back when I was younger and still had faith in my position as the king. I wasn't sure if he had been scolding me for using magic or not – but he certainly wasn't happy to hear about it. Maybe it'd be better to not mention it to him anymore.

I loitered around in my quarters for a while, not daring to touch anything with my filthy fingers, then took the walkway to the bath house. I usually had servants do everything for me, or rather had no say in whether I wanted them to do everything or not, but during the purification ritual nobody was allowed to touch me. Moreover, Olivier had really told everyone to leave me alone, so there was absolutely nobody at the bath house, not even the usual guards at the doorway. I suspected that Olivier had told them to scatter as well, not wanting them to see me the way I currently was.

This was actual bliss. Just me and the lovely scent of the royal baths.

I let myself soak in the warm pool for a long while and made sure to get all the soot off my skin. I still had no idea how exactly I had knocked myself out, but I noticed faint, red marks on my arms here and there, all the way from my shoulders to my fingertips. And, as I leaned back against the wall of the pool, I made notice of the back of my head hurting. I must have hit it on the floor. I was exhausted to the core, too, feeling as if I'd just run a marathon, or how I imagined it to feel like, anyway.

Maybe Olivier was right to be a bit concerned after all. Maybe the next step in learning to control magic was to start building up some stamina. My build was certainly lacking in muscle as it was. It would be rather challenging to get any exercise done when I was expected to sit around in the palace wearing heavy robes all day.

The soot dyed the warm water black. Some purification period this was...

Once I was satisfied with my long soak, I got out and dried myself, slipped into a new pair of white robes and slippers, and sat down on the bath house’s second floor balcony to let the fresh air dry out my hair, all by myself. Hitting my head aside, it was the most peaceful, pleasant day, with no pampering servants anywhere in sight. Maybe I should have lied about feeling under the weather and wishing to be alone more often. How long would it take for the Elders to get suspicious? And did it actually matter? At the end of the day, if Olivier allowed me something, the Elders had very little say on it.

It didn't seem wise to continue practising magic any more that day, so I returned to my bedroom in Bixiùwu and grabbed one of the books I had brought from the library. It was probably a good idea to read more on qigong to be able to channel magic through my body efficiently. I was pretty determined about this, and it felt good to have something meaningful to focus my mind on.

At exactly five o’clock, there was a knock on the doors again. It was Olivier, asking if it was fine to serve the afternoon tea. I usually had the five o’clock tea in the outer court tearoom with him, and sometimes some other company too, such as Olivier’s page Mathilda. She was still young and inexperienced, and usually forced to attend the tea ceremony by Olivier. My company obviously made her anxious, and she’d only ever shake like a leaf in my presence, unable to drink her tea, so I hadn’t ever figured out what the purpose was. Her behaviour was strange to me, given that she was in such good relations with Mao, who was one of the few people who didn’t treat me in any special manner and loved to preach about all the stupid things I had done in my youth. Apparently Mao’s attitude hadn’t rubbed off on Mathilda.

Despite being timid and having a frail figure, Mathilda was Olivier's page and had to be highly skilled in combat, no matter how unlikely it seemed. All knights and knights-in-training were nobles, albeit not just anybody could become a royal knight; they were said to be appointed by the Heaven to match their king, and had to show exceptional talent and loyalty. Even the royal knight's page and squire were high up in the overall hierarchy of nobles.

Anyway, all this about Mathilda aside, I told Olivier that I wanted the tea brought to my quarters again. I’d have it alone so I could keep reading while drinking.

I was hungry. This fasting business wasn’t very enjoyable. Who in their right mind would have enjoyed it? I wondered if the people who came up with this rite had ever tried to live through a whole day with nothing to eat. Would anybody even notice if I snacked on rice crackers all day? Probably not. For some reason this train of thought brought Takao to my mind, and imagining  how infuriated he would have been about having to fast like this was rather entertaining...

Like this, my starved mind wandered on and off the pages of the book. And I ended up rolling around on my divan, never finding a satisfactory stance to read in. If only the Sun had set a bit faster. It was hard not to think about food.

 _Thud_. Suddenly something hit one of the windows. The unexpected sound startled me right out of my thoughts.

I first thought that it might have been a stray bird, but then I heard it again... and again. It was too systematic to have been caused by an animal, or – well, what else could it even be? But something had definitely knocked on a window panel three times just now.

Alarmed and puzzled, I jumped up and slowly inched towards the veranda doors at the other end of the room. Not daring to take a peek through a window, I placed a hand on one of the doors, and after a moment of hesitation, slid it open so fast that it slammed against the wall with a bang.

I blinked. The veranda was empty.

I glanced left and right. Nothing that could possibly have hit the window.

Did I imagine the sound after all? Maybe I was just so exhausted that –

Something soft hit me very hard. I lost my balance and fell backwards.

“ _Reeeeeei!_ ”

Once I was over the shock of hitting the carpet _again_ , I noticed arms wrapped around my shoulders. That something soft was Max in a thick fur-trimmed cloak. He had shot through the doorway like a cannonball and was now on top of me on the floor.

“What – wait – _how_ – ?” I could hardly breathe. He had knocked the air right out of my lungs.

Max let go and sprang up to his knees, a bit alarmed himself but nevertheless beaming down at me. “Oops. Sorry, I hope that didn't hurt.”

Even if it had hurt, I was too stumped to register the pain.

“What are you doing here?” I gasped. “ _How_ are you here?? This can’t be real. Now I’m just going plain crazy.”

“You're not crazy. I rode Genbu here.”

“You did _what?_ ”

“I rode Genbu! All invisible, of course.”

I rubbed my head while shaking it in utter disbelief, unconvinced that it wasn’t a hallucination caused by a low blood sugar level or something.

But no, it really was Max, right there in person in my room.


	15. Genbu-ou IV

I had seen some of the interior of Rei's room during our calls, as well as photos of the royal Tiger Maple Palace of the West in general, but actually being there was still a whole different story. It all felt colossal, especially that outer wall that surrounded the palace grounds and stood threateningly against the grey sky, effectively creating a rather sultry atmosphere around the palace. The wall disappeared into a thick fog as I tilted my head back to look up at it, making it impossible to see the top from the garden lake.

Everything about the palace was shiny, garish gold, bronze, and other metallic hues wherever they had managed to stick them into. The old-fashioned lanterns didn’t provide a whole lot of light as they were, but all the metallic surfaces reflected their dim light and made the whole place gleam like an actual lump of gold. Whatever wasn’t made of metal was wood, often painted in red. And upon a closer look, I noticed a lot of feline-like shapes on the palace grounds: ancient-looking stone statues with crazy expressions, as if showing off their teeth to intimidate any trespassers, and metallic ornates of cat-like creatures lining the roofs. Even the window decor was strange; they had this completely unnecessary latticework that, from the inside, only enhanced the image of it being a prison. A very lavish prison, but anyway.

And that was only the building that I knew to serve as Rei’s personal quarters. This private mansion of his was so conveniently placed in a hidden pocket squished between the palace wall and a mountain, it was like its own safe haven in the furthest corner of the palace grounds. The Tiger Maple Palace stretched in every direction from there, covering a huge area that covered so many buildings that I didn’t remember how many, but several dozens of them at least, all littered here and there inside the tall walls. Having read about the place in textbooks before, I felt like a trespassing tourist about to infiltrate the royal palace from a back door. I guess technically that’s exactly what I was.

Rei’s bedroom alone was so ridiculously big from inside. What did one person need all that space for, I had no idea. It had a very low table just for drinking tea, and lots of pillows to sit on, and a divan and another table, and a very old-fashioned cabinet, and so on. The most striking feature of the room, though, was a wall entirely taken up by a painting of Byakko, so big that I could have walked right into the painting, if that were possible. It was the sort of surrealist Western landscape painting that had messy brush strokes and very few colours. Its thick, golden frames were far more intricate in design than the painting itself. Art wasn't a strong suit of mine, though, since I was more inclined towards music, so I couldn’t tell the value of the painting at all.

Rei lay on the carpeted floor with an incredulous look on his face, staring at me like he’d just seen a ghost. (It was him who looked more like a ghost here, though, in his flowy white robes, and his complexion gone so pale from surprise. I hadn’t meant to spook him like that,  but I hadn’t been able to contain my excitement.) After a bunch of stupefied seconds, a puzzled yet happy smile finally rose on his face.

I moved a little as he sat up and tapped my cloaked shoulders, as if testing that I really was physically present.

“It really is you!” he then concluded with triumph, apparently satisfied with his test, “but – how? I don’t understand how you’re here.”

“Since you can't leave your house, I came here to visit you instead.”

“But how did you get in? You can't walk through solid walls with magic, can you? And what – you rode a holy beast without anyone seeing you?? And, and... Ah, are you okay? Should you take that off?”

I had started wobbling a little, my head spinning; or rather, Rei’s shiny room has started spinning in my eyes. I was feeling faint after using so much magic to get there, to the point that I didn’t have the strength to properly shed my mantle off my back. I’d been so excited about finally reaching Tiger Maple, I’d used up all my remaining strength by jumping on Rei. Not the wisest of decisions.

“Oh,” I mumbled, “I exhausted all my magic on the way here, I’m kind of tired.”

“Do you need anything? Water? I have some leftover tea…”

“Do you have anything to eat?”

“No, sorry…”

“Well, tea will do, I guess.”

Rei helped me toss the heavy mantle aside (as well as take my boots off), then rose to go fetch a cup of lukewarm green tea. I didn’t care to mention that I didn’t even like tea, and it was better than nothing for replenishing a bit of my strength, anyway. It was really bland, as expected, but I was thankful nevertheless.

Once I could think at least somewhat straight again, I was able to answer his questions.

“I used the mountain stream, so I didn’t need to pass the wall at all. You showed it to me the other day, you know, how the outside of your room looks like. That’s kind of a weird safety hazard, having that huge wall but then making it cut off at the mountain.”

“Huh? Well… But that cliff is supposed to be impassable…”

“Maybe for humans, but Genbu can move along any waterway. It doesn’t _actually_ swim down the stream, but more like moves along the water… It’s rather complex magic to be able to hang on to it in the process… I’ve never kept going for this long before. Sheesh, I’m hungry now.”

I could tell from Rei’s expression that he didn’t really understand.

“Moves along the water?” he repeated, puzzled.

“Yeah, like it becomes part of the flow, I guess. It's basically teleporting through water. It just goes, woosh.” I flailed my hand to demonstrate.

“So you’ve been on your way here all day?”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t take that long. Moving through waterways is really fast. That’s why it takes up so much magic just to hang on. Staying invisible takes a lot of energy, too.”

“But – but how did you know –”

Whatever Rei was about to ask next was cut right off by a firm knock on the door at the other end of the room. We both froze. Rei’s pointy ears jumped a little, like a startled animal’s.

“It’s Olivier,” he whispered, or rather formed the words with his lips without a sound. He threw agitated looks between me and the door for a moment. Then he looked around the room, as did I; and in silent consensus I jumped to my feet to go hide somewhere. I could have gone back outside, but it was easier and faster to hide within the room itself, so I sneaked over to a wall of thick curtains that split the room in half. I knew the curtain to be a partition that separated Rei’s sleeping space from the rest of the room; the layout of his room was familiar to me from our numerous calls, after all. Behind the silk curtain was Rei’s bed (enormous, and also covered in silk, what else) on a little platform, right in front of a round window that shared the same lattice work as other windows of the building.

How easy it would have been, if only I had had enough strength left to use magic. I didn’t remember ever getting into a situation like this before, because my magic had always been there for me. But it was pretty exciting, I must say. I felt like I was in a stealth video game.

As I got up to hide, Rei also got up and headed over to the door. I couldn’t see him anymore but listened through the curtain, nearly holding my breath, as Rei slid the door open and immediately began scolding Olivier.

“What are you doing here?! Don’t tell me you forgot about my order already.”

“Not at all, Your Majesty, I just came here to ask about dinner. You weren’t answering the front entrance. I was worried that you’d done something to yourself again and wanted to check that you’re alright.”

“Oh. Ah.” Rei sounded a bit flustered at the unexpectedly affectionate response. “I see. Oh, tell them to bring the dinner here. Just bring it to the entrance. Oh, and bring me more tea first. I’m, uh, feeling really worn out.”

“Really? So you have been using magic again?”

“No, it’s just the fasting. It’s probably not good for my health, you know. Bring the whole teapot, actually, I don't think one cup will be enough to calm my nerves. Oh, bring some sweet snacks too.”

“Sweets? Before dinner? Are you sure?”

“Just do as you’re told. I need the sugar.”

“Good grief. Take better care of yourself, Your Majesty. At least wait until the purification is over before you try using magic again.”

“I’m _not_ using magic, it’s the fasting.”

“Right. Understood, Your Majesty. Just remember to not neglect the fasting.”

I pressed a hand against my mouth, trying not to laugh at their weirdly haughty bickering. Rei was a terrible liar, and Olivier’s voice was seeping with sarcasm and I wasn’t too sure if Rei even realised that.

“And one more thing,” Olivier then went on, “did you take a look at the documents yet? I hope you acknowledge how important they are.”

“Thanks for reminding me, I will take a look while enjoying the tea.”

“All right. Well then, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, Your Majesty. Good night.”

Rei heaved a deep sigh once the bedroom's door was safely closed again. I found him still standing with his back to the sliding door as I stepped out from behind the curtain.

“Have you really been using your magic?” I asked him.

“Well… I tried it out earlier today and made some progress – got it to materialise for the first time. But it blew up on my face, so Olivier noticed it...”

“Blew up??”

“There was soot and smoke and everything.”

“So you can blow things up with your magic?”

“I think I just short-circuited myself, like some machine. It materialises as electricity.”

“That’s amazing, Rei! That’s so cool!” I grabbed his hand in both of mine and shook it in a fit of excitement. “So cool, so cool! You’re going to be able to use magic soon, and you only just started practising!”

I absolutely loved the modest little blush that rose on Rei’s cheeks. “That’s a bit much, I’m nothing compared to you yet.” His golden eyes shone with content despite his humble words.

“You don’t need to compare yourself to me. Focus on your own progress!”

“...You’re right...”

The tea and sweet snacks that Rei had asked for were soon delivered to his door. I had to hide again when they did, as the servants simply wouldn’t take a no to serving everything in the bedroom, despite him ordering them not to.

The low tea table in the middle of the room, now loaded with dishes, was the cutest little thing. I figured it was probably used for nothing but serving tea, the Westerners being just that particular about their tea sessions. The North was more of a coffee country. And a sitting-on-chairs country. We now sat down on silk cushions on opposite sides of the table, the servants long gone.

The sweet snacks turned out to be a set of pink and green macarons, a sugary pastry that I had sometimes seen in coffee shops.

“How cute,” I said, picking one in my hand. “These are like princess food.”

“Olivier makes them himself.”

“What, really?!”

“Yeah, he's actually the best cook around here. He’s even won some awards.”

“Wow, I didn’t know a royal knight could have some other occupation too… I doubt Giancarlo has ever even been to a kitchen.” The already delicious macaron tasted even better knowing that it was handmade by a knight. Each pastry was packed with so much sugar that I could already feel my magic coming back to my fingertips. Eating a few would suffice to replenish enough magic for my way home.

Rei laughed at my remark a little.

“Max,” he then said, placing his cup on the table, “it was a bit confusing to see you suddenly appear here, but – I really am glad you came to see me. You're crazy for taking the risk of coming here, but I'm happy that you did... I think.”

I gave him a wide smile. “It’s worth it. The talkpads are nice, but I just don’t like the thought of you being stuck here alone. And I've wanted to visit your place anyway.”

I let my eyes wander around the room and all its fascinating, though kind of chaotic, details again. I noticed that there weren't a whole lot of personal items around, mostly just stray books here and there, and the white talkpad sitting on one of them. Despite the room’s size, it felt a bit empty, with most of the furniture being for gaudy decoration only. The West was so pompous; their royal palace made me feel like they just wanted to _look_ the richest out of the four kingdoms, and underline how god-like their king was by making his residence totally unnecessarily coated with gold and other pointless things. The rest of the country was polluted and overall rather miserable, or so I had learnt.

Yet there sat Rei, just another person like me, sitting on the other side of the table while absentmindedly rubbing the back of his head. He’d probably hit it on the floor when I had jumped on him (I hadn't expected him to crash down like that, as he hadn’t told me anything about this fasting business and all). It sounded like he'd had a busy day. As I looked at him now, I realised he was wearing his hair loose for once; I had only ever seen it braided before. The hair flowed down his shoulders and onto the floor like a cascade of purple and white.

“So how exactly did you get here again?” Rei then asked, furrowing his brows, still looking a bit confused. “Through the mountain? On Genbu?”

“Like I said, we used the stream to come down the mountain, and then I materialised myself in the lake. I’m sorry it was so sudden – I wanted to surprise you. At least I sealed Genbu before knocking. I thought finding it at your door would be a bit much.”

“Huh.” Rei looked so puzzled, I wasn't sure if he really followed. “Materialised in the lake. How are you all dry, then?”

“The invisible shield is waterproof,” I explained. It was obvious enough to myself.

“And how fast exactly did you get here?”

“I don’t really know. I told you, it’s like teleporting, like entering a different dimension to travel inside water. It warps the passage of time, too.”

“Holy cats.” Rei’s eyes widened in surprise. They were tinted with sheer respect, which made me feel a little proud of myself and my magic. I was so used to it myself, I rarely thought it very impressive, but it felt nice to be admired for it.

“Yeah, not a lot of time to do sightseeing on the way.” Normally, an ordinary flight from the Northern royal mansion to the Western one took three and a half hours. There was also an international railroad connecting the capital mansions, but it took at least double – if not thrice – as long. It really wasn't a trip I could make here and back in just a few hours under any normal circumstances. (This was only possible for the North and the West, by the way, as the East’s capital was in the lower part of the country, not to even mention the South which was on the other side of the world altogether. There was no railroad, or any other road to that matter, across the Core.)

“I assume your parents don’t know anything about this?” Rei then asked.

I couldn’t help an impish grin, albeit I always did feel a bit guilty for sneaking out without telling them. “I make Giancarlo stand on guard while I'm gone. I've become really good at sneaking out – magic helps a lot. Though, I've never actually left the _country_ before. Gotta be extra careful not to be seen anywhere.”

“I'm a bit alarmed that it's actually that easy to sneak into the palace. How have I not been assassinated yet?” Rei looked pretty anguished for a second. Well, his concern wasn't without reason – I had read, in fact, that the insanely tall wall had been built after the incident with the previous Byakko-ou. Not that it really meant anything when Rei’s greatest enemies seemed to be inside the palace, the people keeping him behind locked doors. But I didn't want to go all dark here, now.

“Assassins don’t know magic, probably,” I said nonchalantly and tried taking another sip of the green tea. I recalled Rei telling me before that it was the custom to drink the tea plain like this. It mostly just tasted bitter on my tongue, and I couldn’t stop my face from making a bit of a disgusted expression at it. “Oof. Does nobody in the West have any taste buds?”

“Maybe we don't,” Rei said with a laugh. “Or maybe your sweet tooth is just a bit too big?”

“Please, your teeth are much bigger than mine.” It was true, Rei had literal fangs in his mouth; and they were best visible when he laughed, like right now. When we first met, he had always covered his face when he laughed, but apparently not anymore.

“Big, but not sweet.”

Oh, but I thought they were pretty sweet, though. His appearance was a fascinating mix of sharp and elegant.

Then, while picking another macaron from the rainbow-hued selection in front of me, I asked: “Is fasting part of that purification thing? That's a religious practice in the North, too. But hardly anybody does it anymore.”

“Another stupid idea someone's come up with,” Rei muttered. “Because I _am_ a religious figure myself. But it’s a problem, with how much energy training the magic consumes, and me basically having none.”

“That’s not a great combination.” I bit the mint green macaron just a bit too hard, holding back all the contempt I really held towards this purification nonsense. It all sounded more like a punishment than a religious ritual – if I was asked, Rei was obviously being punished for seeing even a glimpse of the real world out there. But to the people of the West, a ‘purification ritual’ probably sounded like such a grand and spiritual thing. Maybe even to Rei himself. It's hard to put things in the right perspective when you're not really allowed to see them from outside.

I truly felt bad for him. And the more I thought about it, the worse I felt on his behalf. Once the idea of coming to see him in person had blossomed in my mind, I couldn’t not do it, no matter how much magic and effort it took, and even now I felt like it was the right decision.

Rei placed his tea cup on its saucer. “But I have no intention of waiting for two moons without practising magic,” he said, knitting his brows together again. “The faster I learn to use it, the better.”

“You know what you should do?” I then asked, immediately wishing to lighten the mood despite my own brooding thoughts, because that’s what I arguably did the best. “Summon Byakko and take it with you, and go right in the middle of the city. Then loudly announce that hello, I am in fact made of flesh and blood like everyone else in town, and this here is my pet cat, and I would like you all to stop thinking otherwise and not keep me from having lunch, for example.”

“That wouldn't work,” Rei said with a smirk, “they’d all faint as soon as they saw Byakko. I wouldn’t want them to collapse on the streets like a row of Tien Gow tiles...”

“Okay then, I have a _better_ idea – you should ride a bike around the city, just a normal bike, imagine that... Their worshipped Byakko-ou, casually on a bicycle... Or a tricycle, if you can't ride a bike. That would turn some heads. And eventually you’ll be just like Takao, just casually going around and everyone thinks ‘oh, there goes the king’!”

It was hard to imagine Rei on a bicycle, and the thought made both of us laugh. But Rei’s laughter died down soon enough, and he cast his eyes down at the tea cup, his expression as bittersweet as the combination of the green tea and the macarons.

“I wonder if I'll ever get there, though...” he said.

“I know you will,” I said at once, as firmly as I could muster. “You're already working hard, aren't you? Have faith in yourself and fight it!”

After a pause, Rei raised his eyes again. Looking a bit bashful, when he spoke again his voice was thin and delicate, yet was filled with warmth.

“I can't imagine doing something like that alone at all,” he said, “but... whenever I talk with you, I feel like things will work out one way or another. When I share my thoughts with you, they feel a lot less intimidating all of a sudden. But when I've expressed my discontent to Olivier, or Mao or Rai or anyone else before, they've just seemed, you know, concerned over it not being suitable for the Byakko-ou. But you are different – it’s like you've been able to read my thoughts right from the start.” Then he suddenly squinted at me. “Your powers don't include reading minds, do they?”

“Goddess no, that would be so weird! I'm glad they don't!”

Rei's suspicion was amusing, but I just couldn't not look at him without beaming in affectionate excitement. Hearing him say all this made me a bit emotional – he hadn't been talking about his feelings very openly before, our daily calls had pretty much included anything but, as he usually put up a bold front to appear stronger than he really was. That had been the very first impression I’d had of him.

If the table and the tea set hadn't been there between us, I would probably have thrown myself at him; but then he might have banged his head again, so it was better that I didn't. I settled for giving him an encouraging smile.

“All I've done is read up on you and connect the dots,” I said, “and since you're saying all that, I guess I'm not too far off. And that's the honest truth! Rei, I'll always be behind you – we kings should stick together. I don't know if there's anything I can do to help Takao or Kai, but at least I'm here for you, and I believe in you. And I’m sure Takao does too. And, well, Kai… He’s a tougher cookie to crack, but maybe he’ll join us one day.”

Rei's golden eyes were really shining at me, brighter than any of those gaudy trinkets of his palace. His eyes were such a warm and graceful colour when he smiled. He didn't say a word, looking like he was momentarily out of any, but words weren't needed to tell how grateful he was.

Neither of us said anything at all for a while. It wasn't an awkward silence, but a gentle one that wrapped comfortably around us and closed off everything else – the rest of the room, and the whole palace, and the grim world around it. At that moment, for the first time since we first met, I could tell that Rei was genuinely happy. And it made me happy, too, and caused a small, warm stir in my heart.

A sound cut through our silence like a knife. It was the sound of a thousand needles falling from the sky at once; it had started raining outside, a heavy downpour that appeared completely unnoticed. We turned to look in the sound’s direction in unison. The veranda door was still open, and a whole army of droplets were now trying to barge right in, determinedly bombarding the veranda floor and the windows.

“That’s probably just a short shower,” Rei said. The West was notoriously famous for its gloomy weather all year round, so this didn’t exactly surprise me.

We stared out into the rain for a while. The lake beyond the doors only amplified the noise into a deafening gush; it looked and sounded like the entire sky was coming down on the garden. Combined with the darkening dusk outside, it was a rather eerie scene, the polar opposite of that warmth the room had basked in only seconds ago, as if the cold rain had just washed it all away.

“I’d better get going, this rain is perfect for moving around unnoticed,” I then concluded and stood up from my pillow. “I hope I can make it before it stops again.”

“But you just got here...” Rei hung his head, looking so adorably disappointed.

“I’ll come back some other day, don't look so sad. I did sneak out in secret, and I can’t make Giancarlo keep the facade up for _too_ many hours.”

“Of course…” Swallowing his disappointment, Rei reached for the tea table. “At least take the rest of the macarons with you, so you won’t run out of magic.”

Nodding in agreement, I stuck as many macarons as I could in my pockets. “I think Giancarlo's gonna want those,” I said with a grin, “especially when he hears Olivier made them. Giancarlo keeps talking about him like they’re best friends already.”

“Did you tell him you're coming here?” Rei asked, surprised, as we walked over to the veranda.

“Sure did”, I said, picking my mantle and boots off the floor. “I don't keep secrets from him. He may be a bit rough on the edges, but he's a trustworthy pal. He’s not gonna gossip about it to anyone.”

Rei nodded, staring thoughtfully into the rain. Maybe he considered telling Olivier the truth, too. I believed that Rei could win Olivier over by talking to him, so I supported this idea in silence, but since he didn’t voice it, I didn’t say anything either. If nothing else, a king should be able to wholeheartedly trust their royal knight, even if the rest of the world was all against them. There was no ally more valuable than a knight. Well, apart from another king, maybe. Or three other kings.

Despite the pocket that the palace wall and the cliff on the other side formed, I was thankful for the thick downpour for concealing our forms and voices from the rest of the world. There was no way anybody could possibly have seen or heard us out there. I stuck my hand inside my collar and dug the pendant out, opening it to reveal the black gemstone carved into it. It emitted a soft, purple light, barely visible through the rain.

“Are you going to summon Genbu now?” Rei asked, sounding breathless like a child expecting to see the most astonishing magic show to begin. Sadly, I couldn’t deliver him that show.

“I can only release it under water. I think it’s a bit shy. And the summoning makes a lot of light, so I wouldn’t risk it, even in this weather.” I fiddled with the pendant, searching for the right words to say. “Rei – I wanna apologise one more time for startling you so bad. Next time I'll tell you when I'm coming.”

“Don’t worry about it. I know I should be telling you not to do this ever again, but – I look forward to the next time.” Rei grinned, flashing those sharp fangs of his again, and I couldn’t have agreed more with him. It was risky and probably downright stupid to sneak into a royal palace like this, but this was the only way for us to meet each other without it turning into a farce of formalities and bodyguards and plans made a whole moon ahead. Sometimes being a king did kind of suck.

“See you later, Rei,” I then said and turned to face him one last time, “I'll call you again tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you, Max.”

I leaned over to give him a brief goodbye embrace, then backed away out of his reach before he could touch me back. With a wave of hand, I walked backwards off the veranda and formed a bubble-like shield around myself as I fell into the water, smiling as I went. I loved that horrified expression that I saw flash on his face a second before I hit the water.

Once below the surface, I took the pendant in my hand again and concentrated on summoning Genbu again.


	16. Byakko-ou VII

I remained standing there on the veranda, a lone island surrounded by the violent downpour, and stared at the spot where Max had been only seconds earlier. All I saw was a distant flash of purple in the flooding water. He had left so suddenly, I regretted not saying or doing something more for him. Obviously enough, he was gone and didn't re-appear anymore.

I couldn’t tell if I was disappointed or relieved that he didn’t summon Genbu right in front of my eyes. It was impossible for me to fathom how exactly Genbu, a giant tortoise, could climb up the steep cliff of the Tiger Maple Mountain, especially without being noticed. The holy beasts could probably do all kinds of things that I couldn’t even imagine. The ease at which Max could summon his made me shudder. Even after everything Max had told me about his magic, it was still hard to believe to be real.

By the time I finally moved back inside the house, I realised that I was shivering from cold. I had stayed outside for so long that the rain had stopped almost completely, and now the pond was flooding. The pillars supporting the veranda stood tall enough for the water not to reach its plank floor, but it had also rained hard enough to leave the floor wet, and I was dressed lightly.

After grabbing a towel from the dressing room, I suddenly remembered the weekly folder that Olivier had brought to me. Of course I'd forgotten about it while Max was here, or rather, I hadn't even cared to remember. I also remembered that I was starving, and I’d have to wait for a while longer still for dinner… It was hard to tell if the Sun had gone down already, since it was so cloudy outside.

I took more tea, grabbed the folder, and sat down on a cushion to flip through the documents. It was mostly a catalogue of recent decisions, contracts or findings made around the country: personnel changes in companies (a known business tycoon had recently been accused of corruption, which had been the main topic of everyone's interest for a while), construction work news (they were finally building another tunnel through the Jishi mountain range, but the safety inspection had turned out lacking), reports on cultural events, a report of an oil spill in a chemical facility and an estimate of the damages… and something about mining. Because I had been absent from the council today, Olivier had slipped in an extra sheet of paper explaining what had been discussed.

“ _The main issue right now is the procedure to expand mining activity in the municipality of Gédào, lower Kuí. While mapping the area of planned expansion, an unexpected discovery was made. The miners appear to have found a tunnel that is not part of the existing mining network. A special unit confirmed the finding and the location of the tunnel underneath the mining network through an auditive experiment. No access point for entering the tunnel has been found. The size and span of the tunnel are also currently unknown. Upon the Elders' decision, the expansion procedure has been halted for the time being, and miners will instead be instructed to dig a new chamber for explosives so that the unknown tunnel can be safely accessed. This is estimated to take two weeks._ ”

Huh. Apparently that was a big deal, then. The mines were a century old, and the existence of old, long since abandoned tunnels didn't sound strange to me at all. I sincerely hoped they wouldn't find the rotten skeletons of previous miners down there or such.

I finished reading through the folder and set it aside just as the servants brought the dinner in. It was getting late and today, in all its peacefulness, had left me exhausted in several ways. Despite being so hungry, I couldn’t make myself eat much at once, and rather just wanted to lay down for now.

I quickly tied my hair on a loose braid, grabbed a book to read before sleeping, then pulled aside the curtain covering my bed and dove right under the warm covers. My feet were still cold.

I wondered if Max was back to Snow Glory already. Thinking about it now, randomly jumping on his holy beast's back and riding all the way here, to a different country, just to see me, was pretty mad of him. Was it seriously possible to teleport through water with magic, anyway? Obviously it had to be, if Max was doing it, but it still felt crazy to me. Our whole encounter and everything he’d told me just now could as well have been a dream.

I tried to imagine myself riding to the North on Byakko. What a nonsensical idea. Could Byakko teleport too? How? Probably not in water, as it was Genbu’s element. Byakko’s element was… metal, was it not? How did that even work? I recalled a children’s movie about a cat turning into a bus...

I rolled over to my left side and stared at the round window frame. I hadn't expected to see Max again any time soon, so I hadn't even longed after such an opportunity. But now that I _had_ seen him, it had set off something, deep inside me, a feeling that reminded offering a starving bird a handful of seeds only to pull it away a second later.

I was lonely. It was a ludicrous thought, when I had Olivier by my side every day, and everybody else around the palace. I could see Mao and Rai and everyone almost any time I wanted. Why would I ever be lonely?

I closed my eyes. I was only imagining things because I was tired.

“ _I miss him,_ ” I thought.

“ _He literally was here just now, why on Earth would I miss him?_ ” said a voice in my head.

But I really did miss him. He had appeared and then disappeared so suddenly, he hadn’t even given me a chance to return his embrace. How unfair of him.


	17. Seiryuu-ou V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> long time no update feels like a good time to say again that this fic isn't beta-read so it's potentially a mess at times!

That following week, if I had been asked what I’d been up to, the honest answer would have been nothing much. There wasn't much I could do during the storm season that lasted most of the moon – storms were cool and all, I loved them, but only as long as I was snuggled up inside the house with tea while the storm stayed outside. So that’s how I spent the majority of the rest of Glebemoon.

I kept checking the talkpad every day, but there had been no more messages from Kai. His only reply had been so short and disappointing, I’d sent him another one right away demanding a proper answer, and tried hammering in that I wanted to be his friend despite all the mess between our families – kinda lost my temper back there, maybe I was a bit hasty and could’ve picked my words better – and I’d heard nothing of him since. I just hoped he'd watched it, at least.

While waiting for an answer, I had talked to Max a few times. He was totally impressed when I told him about Kai’s reply, even if it was only once (hopefully not once in a lifetime), and said that he definitely wouldn’t have expected any. It was kinda disappointing to hear, so I didn’t mention how pointless the actual reply had been.

Max then casually told me he'd gone to visit Rei in the West. By sneaking in in secret, from what I gathered, or as Max described it, “entered through the back door”.

“Wait, _what? To the royal palace?_ Isn’t that… like… really super illegal??”

With a nonchalant shrug, Max replied: “Eh, maybe – if you get caught, that is. But you'd better not be getting ideas from this, Takao. I'm not under constant surveillance like you are, and Rei’s room just happens to be conveniently located.” He shook a warning finger at me, but that silly grin that he often sported didn’t leave his face, so it wasn’t very convincing.

“Geez, I didn't even say anything, no need to preach.”

“But I bet some thought crossed your mind just now. I’m not responsible if you try something stupid.”

I _wasn't_ thinking about it before Max planted the thought in my head himself. “Is it really stupid if you've successfully done it yourself, though??” I asked.

“Takao...”

Max was right, obviously. I could try and come up with some kinda brilliant plan all I wanted, but the reality of my situation was that I'd never get very far. I was completely unlike Max, who had all that awesome magic and a holy beast to ride such crazy distances on. As I was, I could do exactly nothing.

Every now and then, I went in the weaponry chamber and sat on the floor in front of Ryuushinken's stand. I’d given up on trying to pull it out; I just sat there looking at it, thinking, and waiting. I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for, some kind of sign or whatever, but I kept coming back anyway. Something about that chamber was drawing me in, and the atmosphere around Ryuushinken at the back of the room was somehow different. The bright azure gem on its hilt was mesmerising, and in some weird way, looking at it made me feel good. If only I could call Seiryuu out from it. If only…

Sometimes, when I’d come to the chamber at the end of the day and was kinda dozing off while sitting there, I thought I saw a brief glimpse of light in the gem... but it was gone as soon as I tried looking again. It only ever happened when I was tired, though, so I wasn’t sure if I kept imagining it or not.

In other news, I still hadn't started the swordplay practice. This was mostly due to my own grumpy attitude, but admittedly things were getting boring around the castle now. I'd just about had enough of acting cranky towards Gramps and Ralf, so one night, while lying awake in bed, I considered asking Gramps if we could finally get started the next day. Unable to fall asleep because of the loud howling of the wind in the windows, and the ominous rattle of what I hoped were tree branches against the walls (Cherrywood was a fossil of a castle; I half expected it to give in to the storms eventually), I rolled over and tried to re-discover that enthusiasm I'd had for the idea of wielding a real sword just a few weeks earlier. Too many things had happened. The fact that I couldn't wield Ryuushinken was weighing on me, too. Even if I were allowed to carry a sword, it wouldn’t be Ryuushinken, which dampened my excitement altogether. It was like my soul was yearning for it and I didn’t really want any other.

It felt like _years_ had passed since the last fencing practice with Ralf. Now I was almost missing it already. But only almost.

I hadn't even registered that I'd been lying in bed with my eyes open when I suddenly realised that something was flashing in the darkness of my room. A faint yellow light. The talkpad of course, what else! There was a new message!

Too distracted by the flashing to ignore it anymore, I crawled across the bed and reached an arm towards the table that the pad was sitting on. My hand hit the pad and I felt it move; just before it hit the floor, I surged forward and managed to catch it between my fingers. I felt childish triumph over the catch, the same sort that I felt when I successfully caught a frog in the garden. The pad wasn’t quite as slippery, though.

I lazily pressed a button to turn the screen on. The sudden brightness burnt my tired eyes; grunting in agony, I blinked and squinted. But despite the pain in my eyes, as soon as I managed to read what was on the screen…

I'd never gone from half asleep to wide awake so goddamn fast in my life. There was a new message from Kai, finally. _Finally._

Finding the damn tiny ear things in the darkness was too much of a bother, so I hid under several blankets and turned the pad’s volume down, so low that even my own agitated heartbeat seemed louder, before opening the message; even if the entire castle was supposed to be asleep, Ralf had been particularly vigilant at guarding me again lately, and honestly I wouldn't have been surprised if he was standing awake right behind my door. (I hoped he wasn’t. That would be creepy.)

The hologram image popped out, and my expression soured just as fast as my heart sank to the bottom of my stomach in disappointment. The person whose image appeared in front of me wasn't Kai. It was that evil-looking geezer, his grandfather. Seeing his wrinkled mug up this close was not a pretty sight, especially compared to what I’d expected.

“Good evening, young Seiryuu-ou,” the old dude said in his booming bass voice, an uncomfortable smile on his face. “Pardon if I surprise you with my appearance, you must have expected my grandson instead.” No shit. “I'm afraid he's grown to be so terribly cautious and bad at talking to strangers, he hasn’t been the greatest friend for chatting, has he? But I heard of your interest in having closer relations with our kingdom.

“You see, I have had the exact same interest at heart, and it would be a terrible pity for our kings to not get along. But as you may know, with all respect to Your Highness, your grandfather is of a differing opinion – I’m afraid that that man is living in the past, unable to let go. But the present and the future belong to the young ones, and you should be allowed to make your own decisions. I wished to contact you directly, dear Seiryuu-ou, to avoid further confrontation with your grandfather. I'm positive that you understand.

“That is why I would like to propose a friendly contract with you. You see, for quite some time now, I have been harboring a humble wish to send my grandson abroad for a while, to learn some manners and improve his minuscule social skills, and I must say that I am most inclined towards your wonderful kingdom. I offer to send him over to the royal Cherrywood Castle for a period of time – just him alone, not even a knight if that is more reassuring to Your Highness. Please consider it an offer of friendship and of peacefully bringing our royal families closer. I have faith in you to present this offer to your grandfather in a favourable way.

“Well then, I shall wait for your answer, dear young Seiryuu-ou. Now, farewell.” And then his arrogant mug vanished and I was devoured by darkness again. But it wasn’t because of the dark that the hairs at the back of my neck were standing up.

What a speech, goddamn. I wouldn't have expected that in a million years. The evil geezer wanted to send Kai to my place? Dude. This was _big_ . Had something like that _ever_ happened before, sending the king to live in another country? The geezer told me to present the idea to Gramps, but was there any chance at all for Gramps to agree to this sort of thing? He hated the South so much. Now the pad did feel slippery, but it was my own fingers that had gone damp from sweat.

I tossed both the talkpad and the blankets aside and rolled over to my back, thinking hard. Gramps had always been a tutor-like figure to me, and he’d been teaching other young people before me; from what I’d gathered, teaching was some kinda passion of his, and he was really intense about it. He’d written that book on discipline, too. From that viewpoint, I considered... What if I got him to consider Kai another new pupil of his? He could be my opponent in swordplay practice… I figured that Kai had to have some swordplay experience, being the commander-whatever of the Southern army. Yes, I decided to make this my standpoint when approaching Gramps about it. And I'd tell Gramps how Kai didn't like his own grandfather either – see, they've already got something in common.

But the geezer didn't seem all that bad, honestly. His face was kinda sly, but he’d sounded like he genuinely wanted us to get along better. Maybe he was foreboding and scary-looking and kinda ugly, but thinking about it now, judging him based on that and unresolved rumours wasn’t actually fair. Kai had a foreboding presence too and I was ready to give _him_ a chance, after all.

The agitation kept me awake for some time still, but slowly yet surely the howl of the storm that raged outside was fading away, moving to the back of my consciousness. My busy mind wandered off to an azure-coloured dreamland, the exact colour of the gemstone of Seiryuu.

 

* * *

 

I knew that Gramps would be against any suggestion possible if he knew it came from the former Suzaku-ou – hell, he’d probably have refused _anything_ as long as it had something to do with that geezer. So I made up a carefully constructed lie: I’d say that it was Kai himself who wished to escape from the South, and that I'd offered him a place here. In this pretense scenario, Kai was a bit unsure if he’d be welcome here because of the East and the South’s history, and I wanted to prove that we were the good guys. Yeah. That made a nice daydream.

Timing was crucial in this operation, so I stretched my patience and waited the whole day, to the moment of sunset when Gramps would be all content and calm after bath. He was sitting in the swing on the porch, looking at the castle garden below, ravaged by the winds. The gusts had died down for a moment, though the speed at which the cotton candy-like clouds zoomed past the setting sun still gave away that it was only the calm before another storm.

I sat down next to Gramps, fiddling with my thumbs and pretending to drink tea, then couldn’t hold it in any longer and finally opened my mouth. I approached the topic carefully by asking what he thought about Kai.

“I pity that child,” Gramps said to my surprise, “forced to be a cog in the rotten machinery of the South.”

We talked about Kai for a while, and it really was shocking to hear how amiable Gramps actually was towards him. He told me it was obvious that Kai's grandfather had eliminated the late Suzaku-ou – Kai's dad – out of the way so that the crown would be handed over to Kai, someone who couldn't govern the kingdom in practice due to his age, hence allowing the geezer to remain in power. And honestly, all the evidence pointed to that being the case when thinking back to all the news articles, all the interviews and reports from the South, none of which mentioned Kai at all and all of which featured his grandfather in some way, as if he was the de facto leader of the South still. I had a hunch that Gramps knew something more about Kai, too, but wasn't willing to tell me about it, like he never told me much anything in general.

“So, you think Kai's got nothing to do with his grandpa's doings?” I asked him.

“Even if he did,” Gramps said sternly, “that man is merely abusing his innocence for his own benefit.”

So I then began presenting my white little lie to Gramps. I didn't consider it a very _bad_ lie, and besides, Gramps had been lying to me for a lifetime's worth himself, so I thought of this as a harmless payback. I showed him the talkpad and all, telling him how it was from the North (mentioning Max, whose family Gramps knew to be trustworthy, totally added to the credibility) and saying that I'd been talking to Kai through it (that was at least 40.5% true).

When I told Gramps the fabricated story of how Kai had pleaded me to help him escape from the South, and how I thought we could help by inviting him over so he doesn’t need to do anything bad, Gramps took it very seriously. I could tell he was immediately sympathising with Kai, which struck me, for the first time in a while, with the realisation that Gramps was actually a pretty kind-hearted guy.

And to my further surprise, Gramps wasn’t against the idea of taking Kai under our wing for a while. It would require some bureaucracy and a public announcement, but he agreed to do it so long as he didn’t need to have anything to do with Hiwatari Souichirou, and I promised that he wouldn’t. He fully believed all of my lies, which almost made me feel guilty but also kind of amazed, as I had never considered myself a very good liar.

Plus, albeit he added it under his breath, Gramps apparently also thought it was a good idea for me to have company of my own age for a change. I couldn't agree more; Ralf was older than me and spending time with him was about as fun as eating bark off a tree.

I couldn’t believe it. This was really happening now. I’d get to actually spend time with Kai!

But, despite the perfect success of my plan, I _did_ worry a little afterwards that I’d maybe been reckless again, gotten so ahead of myself with my own cleverness that I hadn’t thought the whole thing through. As I laid down that night, I found myself haunted by Gramps’ words about the geezer only abusing Kai – and it occurred to me that I was, perhaps, playing into that geezer’s hands by agreeing to his proposal. But this was what _I_ wanted, too, so it wasn’t like I was taking orders from him or anything, right? It was more like beating the geezer at his own game! If I couldn’t sneak out like Max did, then bringing Kai here seemed the obvious thing to do if I wanted to connect with him in any way. The geezer wanted to bring our kingdoms closer, right? That was harmless enough a goal in my opinion. If Kai was here, the old man wouldn’t be able to abuse him in any way.

There _was_ the fact that Kai’d told me not to get involved with him, of course. He would probably be pissed off about this. Probably sulk for a while the way he did back in the North. But I had a good gut feeling that things would turn out fine in the end. There was this weird sort of power inevitably pulling me towards Kai, and perhaps it was a sixth sense of my own that told me that he also felt the same pull towards me.

 

* * *

 

Gramps apparently leaked the news throughout the castle real fast, because next morning I was confronted by Ralf whose face was so sour it would have made a lemon jealous. He said it was “rather hard to believe that Suzaku-ou would wish to come to the East of his own accord”. I told him to chill out.

When I recorded another message to the evil geezer, I locked myself in the weaponry chamber first just to be damn sure that Ralf or anybody else wouldn’t hear me. It was physically impossible for Ralf to have been eavesdropping on me last night, but his hostile response had made me paranoid that he did somehow survey my bedroom, or had eyes on my back.

As I pressed “send” after finishing the recording, I wondered where exactly that message went. My little secret now flew through the air as invisible particles and somehow ended up in Kai’s talkpad. Technology was weird, and for all I knew, not at all that different from magic.

I remained sitting on the cold, hard floor of the chamber, waiting for an answer, wondering how Kai would feel about this.

It didn’t take long for the geezer to reply with another message where he praised me for agreeing to cooperate, and said that Kai would surely appreciate the opportunity, even if he didn't seem like it first. He described Kai as “a stubbornly insincere child who liked to pick fights with others”.

I thought he was probably just describing himself now and projecting it on his grandson.

 


	18. Genbu-ou V

Rei had told me, loud and clear, that he didn’t want me to sneak into his room anymore. Therefore, from there onwards, we always mutually agreed on it beforehand.

Giancarlo was not happy about my repeated escapades. He said that I was gone for far too long, a bit longer every time, and that it was starting to turn into seriously risky business. I didn’t understand his concern – what was the worst thing to happen if someone discovered that I wasn’t in my room? I could have been anywhere. To help him escape the responsibility, I began giving Giancarlo all kinds of false errands to run so he’d have an excuse to be somewhere else, too. But that didn’t please him either. He lamented ever teaching me to sneak out.

“It’s just not right,” he said, “for a royal knight to not be by his master’s side at all times.”

“You’re starting to sound like Ralf!” I congratulated him. “Incredible.”

Within the next two weeks, I learnt to estimate the time it took to travel to Tianguan, so that I’d be there to slip inside through the veranda door after Rei had had the five o’clock afternoon tea; the weather remained rainy and foggy, providing a perfect cover for my visits. I had fully corrupted Rei’s so-called purification period by making him eat all sorts of snacks that I brought with me, and he began storing some of his own in his room as well, so he’d never need to go hungry through a day again. We would spend lazy afternoon hours together, often lying on his bed and gossiping about Western and Northern news and politics while eating, sometimes discussing magic, just all sorts of things. It was always so much fun, and although I had only known Rei for a moon, I could see the change in him, from the haughty, insecure and overly serious being he had been when we first met.

Rei always enjoyed listening to me gossip about Northern nobles, as he found all my stories about them so amusing; so I told him about my recent problems with the Baron of Okkusu, Rick Anderson, who had been assigned to write a speech for me for the next Midsummer Festival and wasn’t happy about it. I didn’t know what Rick, out of all people, had against me since he didn’t seem like much of a fan of my mother like everyone else. Maybe he was just mad that I was cuter than him.

“What is the Midsummer Festival?” Rei asked. “I thought there’s no summer in the North.”

“Well, it’s called that because it’s celebrated in the middle of Summermoon. But the weather does get a bit milder, from Sowmoon to Harvestmoon. It’s like this rainy season here in your country, sometimes the weather is a bit different for a while. In Summermoon it rarely snows, and all the ice flowers are in full bloom.”

“Ice flowers! I wish I could see.”

And Rei told me about a recent commotion in the West, thanks to which everyone’s attention was diverted from the capital mansion, so that nobody actually really cared if Rei sat in his room all day. There had been a mining incident in one of the faraway mansions, where the miners had supposedly discovered a new tunnel but found nothing once they went to explore it further. “There was just literally nothing at all there – just a bottomless pit. And apparently the miners were so _scared_ of it that they refused to send anyone down to take a closer look. It's strange; the sound team was so convinced it was a tunnel, too. There’s now a theory explaining it that the soil had been weaker than they'd expected, and they blew up a hole in the ground while trying to reach the tunnel.” So Rei explained to me.

“Fascinating! Sounds like the premise of a scary story!” I said and took another chocolate biscuit stick from a cute little porcelain bowl.

“I was thinking it sounded a bit supernatural.”

“There could be an ancient monster down there, if they were so scared! You need to keep me updated on what happens.”

After a while of gibberish about this and that, eventually, the topic inevitably drifted to Takao and his newest stunt. He had called us both and presented, so proud of himself, how Kai would be staying in his castle next moon. Me and Rei were both mostly just lost with Takao, who was too stubborn to listen to others – and downright obsessed with Kai. Although I found his idea of forcing Kai to the East idiotic, I couldn’t blame him whenever I thought back to the feeling that had engulfed me when all four of us had gathered together. That firm impression of integrity, like we belonged together and had finally become complete by meeting each other.

At the same time, it did seem like Takao’s obsession was playing right into Kai’s grandfather’s hands and there was no way he had any pure intentions whatsoever.

“How about we bet on what's going to happen,” I suggested playfully to Rei. “I say Kai is so steamed up about being forced to the East, he stays stubbornly mute through the whole thing, never shows any signs of wanting to be there, and is sent back home within a couple of weeks. Too bad for Takao, but I don’t really see any other outcome to this.”

The contemplative Rei brought a hand to another star-shaped cracker in the bowl. He didn’t care for sweets much and preferred those salty things. “In that case, I say that Kai is surprised to find himself feeling so at home in the East that he doesn’t want to leave, and decides he’ll stay with Takao. And, well, hmm...”

“Oh, your version is so romantic.”

“Romantic??” Hand stopped in mid-air, holding the cracker, Rei spoke the word as if it was some foreign object that didn’t quite fit in his mouth.

“Like the plot of a cheesy novel.”

“I- I don’t really…”

I sneered as I brought another stick to my lips. Rei was so pure, so unaware of the things that sometimes came out of his mouth. He really was cute. Adorable, even.

“This is going to be an easy win for me, though,” I then said. If Kai’s sulky attitude was a form of rebellion against his grandfather, there was no way he’d give up on that now.

“And what do I get if I win?” Rei asked.

“Hmmm… Well.” I swung my legs up and down on the bed. “If you somehow win – you'll get anything you want.”

“Anything? Really?”

“Yup. But same goes for me if _I_ win.”

This bet was hardly fair for Rei, but he didn’t seem to mind; he grabbed my left ankle, which was the closest to him out of my four limbs, as if to shake hands to seal the bet. “That’s a deal, then.”

But as soon as he touched me, there was an audible _zap!_ and my foot jolted with a pinch of electricity. I kicked his hand off by reflex.

“Wow, hey, don't electrocute me yet,” I exclaimed in surprise, but couldn't not laugh as I did. “Wait until you win, at least.”

“I didn't mean to do that,” Rei said, staring at his own hand, wide-eyed. “I _can_ do that?” he then added. He sounded so genuinely confused, and just a little impressed; it only made me laugh harder.

“You need to be careful with that, I feel like it’s a disaster in the making.”

“I really need to learn to control this...”

I rolled over to my back and sprawled on the soft mattress-floor of the bed. “Too bad I can't really help with that,” I said, “you gotta work it out on your own. Your magic is totally different from mine.”

“I know… I’m just not sure where to go with it. If only someone here could teach me.”

There was a momentary lull in our chatter.

Then, turning to look at me, Rei suddenly asked: “Do you have any friends outside the palace? You only ever tell me about people you don’t get along with.”

“Well...” I stared at the gaudy ceiling of Rei’s room for a moment. And I ended up giving him a diplomatic answer: “The life of a king is a lonely one, isn’t it?” I was free to go anywhere I wanted, but it was tough actually getting to know people when you were royalty. Despite being so liberal compared to the West, the North also was not quite like the East, where Takao could befriend commoners. A definite gap did exist between me and the townspeople. “You’re in better relations with some nobles here, aren’t you?” I then asked.

Rei pulled his knees to his chest, his arms wrapped around them, the ritual robes forming a laced pool of white around him on the mattress.

“I grew up with a lot of people around me,” he began, with a sour edge to his voice. “When I was younger, I was kept in one of the royal villas near the palace. That house felt so big back then” – he let out a short, bittersweet laugh – “when in reality it doesn’t compare to Tiger Maple in any way. It's maintained by Rai and Mao's family, and I grew up considering them my siblings and their parents my parents, or at least my aunt and uncle or something like that. Gaou and Kiki came by often, too, since their parents are nobility and friends with Rai and Mao's family. I really did think that everyone I lived with was my family. Even if I was never treated like the others – you hardly understand such things as a child. I knew I was important because I would be the king when I grew up, but I remember how it felt like some kind of game to me, a distant thought that wasn’t quite real, you know.

“I moved to Tiger Maple when I was twelve, and Olivier has pretty much been my only company ever since. But I can’t say I’d think of him as a friend. Back then I maybe did, or even thought of him as just another brother, but his job was to make sure I learnt my place as someone who’s not the same as everyone else. He refused to call me by my name, and then everyone else stopped doing it, too. And I got so used to it that it started feeling strange when Mao stubbornly refused to call me Byakko-ou. She visits me sometimes, and Rai is a duke so he attends the council, but…” Rei rested his chin on his knees. “It never felt the same anymore... When I started living here, I realised they weren't my actual siblings. I had to start thinking differently of them. My father had died ages ago, and the reason I was taken to the Chens was that my mother couldn't take care of me, and she’d also died while I was there. And then, once I was in the palace, I became the Byakko-ou and couldn't live like other people anymore. It was so confusing. I didn’t even know who I was anymore.”

Rei was quiet for a moment. I had sat up next to him, and he looked at me with his golden eyes tinged with melancholy; like a golden dagger, they pierced right through my heart.

“Do you remember when I asked you if you liked being a king?” he asked. “You said you did. I was honestly surprised by that answer.”

I tried to recall what exactly I’d told him back then. Whatever it was, it must have sounded incredibly conceited to someone like him now that I thought back to it, and I felt a bit ashamed for my own position. Rei and Takao both had made me question things that had always felt so obvious to myself.

“Truth be told, I kind of envy Takao myself,” I said. “It was strange at first, hearing about him being so close with ordinary people. I thought, he's not a very king-like king at all. It just seemed so strange, because I didn't think a king could be so free-spirited. But from your point of view, I’m probably free-spirited as well. Now I’ve started thinking, maybe Takao’s actually the most king-like of us all.”

“Really?” Rei marveled on this for a moment. I gave him a lopsided grin.

“Takao says he's nothing but a phony, but I think he's actually a good Seiryuu-ou. Or going to be, at least,” I said.

“Well, I think you'll make a good Genbu-ou, too,” Rei then said.

“I'll worry about that when Mama stops running the business for good.” I sounded dismissive, but his remark sent a spark of warmth into my heart.

Once it was so dark outside that all we could see was the faint light of the round lanterns, it was time for me to go home. Rei accompanied me to the veranda; it wasn't exactly raining outside, but a light drizzle was falling like a shower of silvery needles, drumming smoothly against the wooden structures, and a cold wind was blowing in the worst possible way, the kind that made your clothes stick to your skin and chilled you down to your bones.

And people said North was the one with the worst weather – no, the West was so much worse all year round. The East had somehow won all the good cards in the climate game, and the other three countries had to do with the pathetic remainders, the crumbs after a feast that were too wet, too cold, and too hot.

I didn't like goodbyes. Usually the moment of separation was just either awkward or not over fast enough, but in Rei’s case, it was nothing but sad. I didn’t want to leave him alone there in the miserable weather, knowing that he had another lonely day inside the palace ahead of him.

I resorted to doing things my way, which meant sugar coating them with cheesy little pranks. After throwing my mantle on my shoulders, I waved my hand over my shoulder, uttered a cheerful  “Okay then, see you!”, and turned invisible.

Rei stood frozen in place, staring at the spot where I had only just been standing. “B-but – wait – ”

When I sidestepped, moved behind him and grabbed his shoulders from behind, I swore to myself, this would be the last time I fooled around with him like this. It wouldn’t be, but I swore so anyway.

“Just kidding!” I said with an impish laughter. “I’m right here!”

The badly startled Rei whirled around, breathless from the surprise. “Don't do that ever again,” he groaned.

“I won't. Maybe. I'm too scared you'll electrocute me for real next time.”

“I just might.”

“I probably deserve it.”

“You do. But you really need to go – someone’s going to barge in here if I don’t show any signs of life soon.”

I quickly squeezed his hands between mine. “See you, Rei. And hang in there.”

“Yeah.” He only stared at our joined hands, his mouth forming a tight, straight line.

“And don’t forget to put those snacks away or Olivier will scold you.”

“I know.”

It was always like this. I wished Rei had pushed me over the edge so I didn’t have to force my own legs to move. And on each of my visits to the West, it got just a little harder every time to leave him there, standing alone in the rain in those white robes that made him look like a ghost.


	19. Seiryuu-ou VI

This storm season dragged on _forever_. And as if it wasn’t boring enough already, I was forced to do some catching up with my studies in a dusty lecture room that smelled like spilled ink and old socks at the bottom of a laundry basket.

Despite his nice response in general, Gramps did have a less fun requirement regarding Kai’s stay in Cherrywood, and it was that I’d study for at least four hours a day from now on. Being sat down in the smelly old room was a whole different thing from just looking up interesting stuff with Professor and didn’t make me jump from joy, but since it was for a good cause, I was willing to endure being pestered by the snobby instructors and reading boring crap that I didn’t understand much of. (And, even worse, writing essays based on those things - how would I write anything when I didn’t even understand what I’d just read? This was the sucky part about studying.)

On the other hand, my studies also covered geography and history, and those had shot up significantly in my books after all the recent events. When presented with a world map, I studied it with genuine enthusiasm that I never knew I had for geography.

I already knew that the East was divided into seven mansions, Suboshi, Amiboshi, Tomoboshi, Soiboshi, Nakagoboshi, Ashitareboshi and Miboshi, but I had never before taken notice that the same applied to all four kingdoms; they each had exactly seven mansions. From social studies I'd learnt that each mansion had a regional officer, basically the leader of the region's affairs and nobility. The regional officer of the capital mansion was actually the royal knight instead of the king, meaning that Suboshi was governed by Ralf rather than Gramps (or, well, me). When did he find the time to do that when all he did was follow me around, I wondered.

Just like the East was shaped like a dragon, the South was shaped like a bird with one big, scrawny wing; the West like what I assumed was a tiger, more like a famished, screaming monster with its mouth open and a group of little islands even forming its fangs; and the North was shaped like a strange turtle, its shell full of holes where the gazillion lakes were. The place we'd visited in the North, Resting Palace with Max's home somewhere in there, was located right in the middle of the turtle's honeycomb stomach.

The South had a huge yellowish blot in the middle, the Tenson desert. It spanned the entire length of the country, from the uppermost mansion of Yokushuku, whose scrawny wing-shapes were actually those famous tourist beaches of the South, to the lowermost mansion of Seishuku. South was the biggest of the four countries, and the capital city where Kai presumably lived, Chousa, was a bit to the right from that desert, located approximately where the bird’s heart would have been.

And the West, where Rei was currently in his petty house arrest somewhere in the capital of Tianguan, had mountain ranges running across the length of the country, forming the stripes on the back of the tiger, as I realised when looking at it from afar. What a funny little detail.

The known world was surrounded by ocean from all sides - and then there was the Core. The Core was the area in the middle of the world, and it didn't belong to any of the four kingdoms. It was nothing but mountains and canyons and ravines, so it hardly made a good place for humans to inhabit. The Core was kind of a mystery to everyone in general; like the ocean, it hadn't exactly been explored through and through, because the ravines ran too deep and the area they covered was simply too big. That mystery had inspired all sorts of wild stories and theories about the Core, some less serious than others; even I had heard a few, and I'd come to notice that the stories followed one of three patterns: the Core being the promised land of renegades, stories about crazy or heroic people who lived there fighting beasts and doing whatever they wanted; stories about all sorts of supernatural monstrosities living in the depths of the Core and unfortunate humans who discovered them (this was my favourite category); and myths about gods and even holy beasts living on the mountains of the Core.

I wasn't sure about the other kingdoms, and the West at least seemed a bit different from this, but here in the East it was common to believe in the existence of a higher realm of gods that all holy beasts originated from. Well-known stories depicted how these gods lived out of humans' reach on three impossibly tall mountains. They were separate from the common spirits that lived in plants and animals here in the actual world, who were considered advocates, messengers or underlings of the higher gods – and so were the four kings, though human in appearance. The four divine beasts were said to live on those mountains, which made it all the crazier that Max was apparently all buddy-buddy with Genbu. And crazier yet, I now knew that I was also supposed to be able to summon Seiryuu into our physical realm. Well, the royalty were in general regarded as the people closest to the gods, the only humans born as their representatives; but all my life I'd taken it as a figurative thing marking our higher status, not _concrete_ like that. And then there was Rei, who was apparently outright worshipped as a religious figure in the West, so I assumed that the connection was taken even more literally over there. And the South - well, I had no idea. I still had so much to learn about the world. I even had lots to learn about the East alone.

I remembered Gramps sometimes claiming how ignorance was bliss for some people, and I could see what he meant by that now. The more I learnt, the better I realised how much more there was to learn.

The best, or at least the most fun compared to studying, way to pass time was chatting with Max and Rei. I did that more often now, sometimes with all three of us in the same conversation. (I still found it a bit awkward to keep looking at two different pictures. I'd end up resizing or moving them around every ten seconds.) Max always had something fun to tell, but Rei's life, on the contrary, sounded like the most boring ever. Despite the West being home to all the biggest technology giants, Rei was forced to live without literally any, so he’d just been perpetually stuck in the Stone Age before receiving the talkpad from Max. Maybe my own boredom wasn't so bad after all.

But I guess Rei didn't have it that bad in the end, either; during one of our shared calls, some pink-haired chick suddenly barged in to his room, and Giancarlo (who casually hung around in Max's room during our calls) educated me about her being Rei's fiancée, the sister of one of the mansion officers. She was kinda pretty, with those big yellow eyes like Rei's and nice curves, and had a funny way of speaking that gave the instant impression of her being fun to be around with. I felt bad for her when I heard Rei scolding her off-screen, telling her she wasn’t allowed to enter his room like that.

“Is she _really_ your fiancée?” I had to ask afterwards. The word was so strange to me, something out of a world of adults that I hadn't paid any thought to before. “So like, your girlfriend? Didn't she just call you her brother?”

Rei coughed on his sleeve, his face suddenly resembling the hue of a beetroot. “It’s an arrangement made ages ago. Mao is my childhood friend.”

He stayed all dismissive until we changed the topic, as if he just avoided answering whether she was his girlfriend or not, so I assumed she was. Or anyway, a person he would marry at some point. Lucky fox! She really was pretty.

I didn’t spill the beans about Kai coming here immediately, but when Sowmoon was about a week away, I couldn’t contain the secret nor my excitement anymore. But when I told Max and Rei, they thought I was joking at first. I assured them that I wasn’t.

Well, it wasn't as grand an occasion as I had expected. Neither of them was very enthusiastic over the news. Their disapproving, skeptical responses annoyed me, probably because they fed my own underlying doubts that I was trying to ignore, and planned to ignore in the future too. I thought they'd share my excitement, since now they'd probably get to know Kai better too; we'd finally get answers to all the burning questions we had been talking so much about. And now, suddenly, they didn’t get me at all. Max asked if Kai had agreed to the arrangement, and I squirmed on my seat a little, muttering that he hadn’t exactly taken part in it.

“But it feels like the right thing to do,” I said in my defence. “I wanna be his friend, and Gramps is gonna take care of him and everything's gonna be alright. Why do you guys look like someone just died? Come on. Think of all the possibilities.”

Whatever, I'd show them later - then they'd admit they were wrong and I was right, and they’d apologise for having been so silly and prejudiced. Yeah. “Sorry, Takao! You were right all along!” and so on. “We’re sorry for ever doubting you! You were steps ahead of us with your thinking!” Like that.

Besides, it was easy for Max and Rei to judge me. _They_ were meeting each other every other day while _I_ was sitting here without anybody bothering to sneak in just to see me. We had agreed to refrain from talking about their secret meetings in our calls because they were just so top secret, and it only enhanced the impression that I was a bit of an outsider here. I’d show them, I’d make Kai my new best buddy, and then we’d have _so_ much fun together every day.

My actual best buddy though, Professor, brought me some strange news one day, when the storms had calmed enough for me to meet up with him at his house as usual. The news of Kai’s upcoming visit had gone viral already, and Tsuno was buzzing with reserved excitement over it, with people not quite knowing what to make of it yet but being curious about another king anyways.

“Takao,” Professor said to me with his laptop in his hands, “I have noticed something very strange.”

“What is it?”

“I have been following some Southern news sites, to see what they are writing about you and Suzaku-ousama. And you know what they are saying?”

“No, I don't.”

“Nothing,” he said. “Their biggest newspapers have written nothing at all about it. I am suspecting that their websites have an encrypted script to keep foreigners from accessing some of their content, but still, it doesn’t make sense. I am working on connecting my laptop to a private network so I could get past the script, but I keep running into a dead end with it. Their security is first rate.”

All I could really say in response was a prolonged “hmmm”. None of the Southern media I had checked out myself earlier had written anything about Kai. That included our meeting at Max's place - I think I saw some mention of it, but it was actually about Kai’s grandfather visiting the North, not so much about Kai being there as well.

But I couldn’t deny that it sounded strange. Had Kai himself arranged it so that there was no media coverage of anything he did whatsoever? I guess a king had the right for such actions, too. I could imagine Kai being the type to appreciate his privacy.

Or… then… if it wasn’t Kai’s own wish… What was actually going on here?


	20. Genbu-ou VI

I wiggled my bare toes in the cool water. For once, it was dry enough for us to be sitting on the pier of the wooden veranda in Rei’s backyard. My socks and shoes lay as a messy pile on top of my mantle on the pier while I dipped my feet in the pond, savouring the rejuvenating energy of the water to replenish my magic. As soon as I stopped moving my foot, a school of colourful fish approached it with caution, curiously eyeing the intruding object. I grinned and splashed my foot again; the fish quickly dispersed in every direction.

It was a serene evening, and the veranda was surrounded by the usual grey dusk of the West. The rain and wind had ceased, but a lacy curtain of thick mist hung above the pond in an intriguingly spooky fashion, gradually closing up on me and Rei on the pier. The mist appeared to swallow the light of the lanterns above us, only allowing a hint of yellow light through. Despite the eerie impression of the scene around us, I felt light-hearted and calm, content to be there sitting next to Rei.

“Do you ever swim here?” I asked.

“In the pond? No, I haven’t ever,” Rei answered. He was sitting with his legs folded underneath him and his hands hidden in the sleeves of his white robes. “Ah... Actually, I don't know how to swim,” he then added and scoffed at himself, clearly not proud of the fact.

“No need to be ashamed of that,” I assured him. “Besides, the water here feels a bit cold for swimming.” With another tiny smirk, I lifted my foot from the water and held it just above the surface. I drew a circle in the air with the tip of my toes and a small pillar of water followed, circling around my foot and forming rings of water like a ribbon.

Rei let out a gasp of admiration that only made me smile wider.

“Is that easy to do?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s easy. Oh, I know - I’ll show you something better.”

Without waiting for an answer, I stood up and focused to create the usual bubble-shaped field of magic around me. Once complete, I took a step forward and stepped off the pier. My foot landed firmly on the surface of the pond, soft and elastic like jelly under the sole of my bare foot. Then I followed with my other foot, balancing myself on the surface for a moment. When I looked down, I could see the bottom as if the pond was made of glass, and the confused fish were beginning to gather underneath me again.

I turned to look at Rei behind me. He had shot up to his feet, his eyes wide like saucers, his face a bit paler than usual but painted with a range of emotions from horror to fascination. I savoured all of them.

“Ah, I thought you’d just sink for a second,” he stuttered.

“What do you think?” I spread my arms on my sides, giving him a reassuring smile. “This is one of my favourite tricks.”

“It’s amazing… How are you doing that?”

“It’s a bubble that lets me float. Only on water, though. I can’t fly or anything, obviously.” Then I reached my right hand towards him. “Want to try?”

Rei shuddered and took a step back by instinct, bringing his hands to his sleeves again. “I don't know enough magic for that,” he blurted. “I’d rather not get wet.”

“You won't – as long as you’re touching me, you'll be inside my bubble. I promise.”

Besides, Rei did know plenty of magic already. He’d made incredible progress in such a short time and was now able to direct an electric current into objects; he’d been practising with light bulbs, though his control over the power was still rough. But I nevertheless found that really impressive, for someone who had been practising magic for only a moon. Mine was the product of a lifetime of experimenting – the water-walking was actually one of the earliest tricks I came up with as a child. It had proven surprisingly useful up in the North, and I used it to avoid bridges while sneaking around at home.

After a few more moments of hesitation, Rei slid his arms out of the big sleeves again and slowly took my hand. As soon as he touched me, he’d already entered my field of magic, but from the uncomfortably tight clutch that he seized my hand with, I figured he didn’t feel nor realise it himself. Other people had told me that they sensed my magic field as a mild freeze, like being sunk into a pool of cool water.

“Are you scared of water?” I asked and gently tugged at Rei’s hand, urging him to step off the pier.

“No,” Rei lied, “I just don’t like it very much.”

He bit his lip and sat down on the edge of the pier. I waited patiently, watching as he lowered one trembling foot down towards the pond. A shy tap on the surface with the tip of his big toe. He gave it a couple more skeptical tries until he was sufficiently convinced that the pond had become solid under his foot, just like it was under mine. Rei drew in a loud breath, gathered his courage, and pushed himself off the veranda. He landed next to me, and I pulled at his hand to keep him from falling over. My own hand had gone white in the pinch of his fingers.

“See,” I said cheerily and swung his arm back and forth, “you did it! It’s not scary. This is how my magic works. Cool, isn't it?”

Rei was staring down at his feet with a tense expression, but slowly seemed to believe that he wouldn’t suddenly just fall through and drown. I saw his shoulders drop as he began to relax, and the clueless fish kept looking up at us, their button-like eyes filled with confusion.

“It feels strange,” Rei said, still sporting a tone of suspicion in his voice, his brows furiously knit together. “Like… I don’t know... rubber.”

“It does feel pretty rubbery,” I laughed. “Try walking on it!”

The ever so slight current of the pond made the foothold a little unsteady, and Rei seemed genuinely scared of falling through the water if he took a wrong step as he tried to follow my example with shaky knees. I couldn’t stand witnessing him so panicked for much longer, no matter how cute it was, so I helped him climb back to the pier after a couple more wobbly steps. As soon as he was back on the veranda, he let out a sigh of relief.

But then he immediately recollected himself, straightening his back and trying to look brave. “That was fun,” he said without a hint of fun is his voice.

“Sure.”

“I, it’s not like I don’t trust you,” he then hurried to say, “but…”

I gave him an encouraging smile. “Don't worry about it, I understand it being weird at first.” I didn't blame Rei if he really was scared of the water, which made sense if he couldn't swim. To me, who loved water as much as the air I breathed in my lungs, it was a pity though.

I then realised that my hand was still not free. I addressed the fact by giving Rei’s hand a light tug again; he loosened his iron grip at once and quickly drew his hands away.

“Augh, I'm sorry.”

I looked at the white marks on my skin, lingering before they gradually began fading away. “You're pretty strong,” I said, actually a bit impressed.

“Did I hurt you? You could have said so…”

I shook my head and turned my attention back to Rei. “Doesn’t matter. I was just thinking that you could end up really powerful - with magic, I mean. And yours seems like the offensive type. You could become a real fighter!”

“A fighter?” Rei repeated the word as if sampling its taste. “Like the knights? Do you think magic could be used with a weapon?”

“There’s nothing you _can’t_ do with magic if you’re clever enough and have good control over it. Or, well, maybe not like, revive the dead. I think.” Truthfully I had no idea, as it had never really become relevant in any context during my lifetime of using magic. While I was momentarily preoccupied with thinking about my own remark, Rei seemed to have caught onto something of his own.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said and scattered my thoughts about revival magic, “that I’d want to learn martial arts. It may be a bit difficult using only books, but I want to try.”

“That’s an amazing idea! You don’t seem as lost as you make it sound sometimes. Have faith in yourself, Rei!”

“Well, it’s just a thought, and I have a lot of time to think while stuck in here.” But the corners of Rei’s mouth were inevitably tucking with a grateful smile, despite his dismissive tone. Sometimes I almost wished he'd have showed more of that arrogance he had when we first met; I hated to hear him doubt himself all the time.

“By the way,” I then said, casting my eyes downwards and beyond my feet, at the school of fish that had once again appeared to bump their heads towards the enchanted surface, “are these guys hungry? I feel like they’re trying to nibble at my feet.”

Rei let out a suppressed chuckle.

“No, most likely not,” he said. “They’re robots, you see.”


	21. Seiryuu-ou VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a random note because it's not very obvious to people in my experience, mihael is the boy from barthez's team who's called miguel in the english dub and has nothing to do with michael loll (their names are pronounced differently!)

The day when Kai finally arrived in Cherrywood, one week into Sowmoon, was a sunny one with all traces of the storm season already long and gone. Each year, Sowmoon brought clearer skies and the promise of something new with it; it marked the beginning of a new period of growth in the East with all the trees and flowers, ravaged by the storms, flourishing anew. And that particular Monday saw the bloom of the first blue cherry blossoms, a variety of sakura that only existed right after the storm season. They'd then fade into the usual light pink for the rest of the year.

That was about the entire extent of my knowledge of plants.

I was so nervous with excitement that day, standing in front of our castle gates with Gramps on my other side, and Ralf with his squire Mihael behind him on the other, and a whole army of guards who formed a protective aisle around us. I hardly took notice of all the buzz happening simultaneously in front of our castle, with curious commoners flocking to the gates behind a protective fence, and media people who all wanted the best coverage of the grand event. I had entered some kinda spaced-out state that rejected all of it. I’d just been waiting for this so eagerly, living the actual moment was absurd.

Several minutes before I could even see anything myself, I noticed the crowd beyond the gates begin to point at the sky, gasping and yelling “here they come!” and other such things; squinting hard enough, I could just about see a very tiny figure against the bright blue background. As it gradually got closer and closer, I came to realise that the figure approaching us wasn’t the same lizard-shaped holy beast that I had seen below us back when Ralf and I flew above Kai’s entourage on our way back from the North. This one seemed to be a bird of some kind… and as it got closer still, I realised that it indeed was a bird, maybe an eagle of some kind - but it had two heads. So long for the lizard beast having had only one, as I had noted back then…

The two-headed bird landed gracefully in front of us, carrying Kai, who wore the same black uniform and vermilion cape of feathers that I had seen him with back in the North, and controlling the holy beast from behind him, a person who was most definitely not Kai’s knight Johnny. I was positive that Johnny had been a pretty tiny dude with tall reddish hair; the person who now escorted Kai off the eagle’s back was tall and lean and had short, silvery hair. This threw me off enough to kind of shake me awake from my daze, and suddenly I was all too aware of the racket of the crowd, and the crazy _flash flash flash_ of all the cameras going off simultaneously.

“His Royal Highness the Suzaku-ou,” the not-Johnny dude announced and bowed a little. I’m pretty sure everyone else bowed, too, but I only stood there, staring - first at this unknown birdman, then at Kai who didn’t return the stare. He was looking at the crowd and the reporters taking all those pictures, and for a second I thought I sensed a flicker of bewilderment from him; but his purple eyes were completely void of emotion, his face reflecting mild annoyance and uninterest if anything. Not-Johnny was not all that different from him, but he did cast one striking glance at our group, Ralf in particular, that was more openly recognisable as uneasiness; but he then quickly recovered his cool demeanor.

“We welcome you to the Cherrywood Castle of Tsuno!” chanted Gramps next to me, which I took for a cue that I was supposed to do something. I took a few steps forward, closer to Kai, who had remained standing next to not-Johnny without moving, and reached out a hand for him to shake.

“Good to see you again!” I said and smiled.

Kai did not smile back. His eyes did move to me, but otherwise the quality of his expression remained the same - aggressively uninterested. For a few worrying, almost panic-inducing seconds I thought he wouldn’t take my hand and that the facade of this having been his own wish would already come crumbling down before he even stepped inside Cherrywood. But then he did grab my hand, although lazily, not even bothering to shake it. I took care of the shaking part to feign it being mutual, or at least I hoped it looked so.

“As requested, I have brought His Majesty alone,” the not-Johnny then said. He was carrying a modestly sized trunk, now obviously offering it to be taken by someone else, so Ralf came forward to take it. “Here are his belongings. I will return exactly a moon from now to take him back to the royal capital of Chousa.”

“Wait, you’re not staying with him?” I blurted, hiking my brows in disbelief. “Who are you, anyway? Where’s Johnny, his knight? I thought he’d be staying with Kai.”

The silver-haired birdman, who had been sporting a downright intimidating, sharp look so far, suddenly appeared a whole lot more jittery at my questions. He grimaced and avoided looking me in the eye. “M-my name is Claude,” he stuttered, “I am the squire of Sir Johnny and accompanying His Majesty in his stead today. Excuse me, Your Highness, but I, I must take my leave now.”

And just like that, the birdman - I mean, Claude - bowed his head at me, then turned to bow at Gramps, and then said a quick “take care” at Kai before returning to his two-headed bird, all of this in a rapid succession. I could only deduce that the poor guy was being tested by Kai’s grandpa or something, and was nervous to get back in time.

Still… Even though that geezer had said that Kai would be coming alone, I hadn’t expected that even his royal knight wouldn’t accompany him. But no, Claude took off with his eagle and left Kai stranded there in front of us and the crowd that circled us on all sides.

It was… kind of sad. I’d been so excited waiting for Kai to come over, I hadn’t expected that his arrival would turn out making me feel bad for him. It was because of such sentiments that, when I began escorting him towards the front entrance of the castle, I told him in a low voice, hopefully inaudible to others: “I promise you’re in better hands here.”

Kai said nothing, didn’t even express that he had heard me; but I had faith that he did, from a barely noticeable twitch in his expression as I spoke to him.

 

* * *

 

On that first day of Kai’s stay, we had a grand banquet in his honour, then showed him the guest quarters that had been prepared for his use. Without a knight or Claude or anyone else who would have been in charge of him, though, it was a bit weird to show Kai around, all alone. Even more so because he was so unreceptive. Several people tried striking conversation with him at the dinner table and got pretty much nothing out of him. Other than that and his muteness, though, to my surprise, Kai did display proper manners and didn’t just completely refuse to cooperate. Once he was shown to the guest quarters, he immediately took refuge in his new bedroom with his few belongings and stayed there for the rest of the day, apart from taking part in having evening tea with us when invited to do so. He didn't seem to care to visit the baths with us, though.

It made me consider that, perhaps, he was actually just shy. Every now and then I also caught another glimpse of that bewilderment I thought I’d noticed in him outside. I didn’t blame him - he’d just been thrown in a foreign country alone, in the middle of people he’d never met before. He wasn’t the sociable type, so perhaps this was all just really overwhelming to him.

I got an idea of suggesting if Mihael could work as a substitute knight for Kai during his stay. Ralf didn’t even like Mihael, so I was sure he’d be willing to lend him to Kai. But just in case, I decided to change the suggestion to an order. It proved to be the right decision; Ralf wasn’t content with the idea at all. Was he ever content with anything, really?

“Why you always gotta be like this?” I asked Ralf once we were alone. “What does it matter if Mihael’s accompanying Kai instead of scrubbing your boots clean all day long? Or do you actually just want him all to yourself? Are you a tsundere or what?”

“Pardon me for saying this, Your Highness, but you may be placing too much trust in that apprentice,” was Ralf’s roundabout answer.

“What? In Mihael? Well pardon _me_ saying this to _you_ , Sir Ralf, but he’s much more fun to be around than you. So you think he's not seasoned enough to act as a royal knight for a few weeks?”

“Not exactly. But it is not a topic that you need to be concerned with. And it is not a knight’s duty to be ‘fun’. I shall be keeping an eye on him myself.”

So I stormed off wondering what Ralf had so against Mihael. Although he hadn’t been in the position for very long yet, Mihael was already a good friend to me, always laid-back and polite and nice, and I’d never witnessed him being a bad apprentice knight somehow. He definitely knew how to use a sword, but Ralf didn’t let him carry his own and just used him for running errands - and scrubbing things clean, so most days I found Mihael doing that in the courtyard.

Well, whatever.

After sundown, when all the hustle and bustle around the castle had died down for the night, I sneaked to the door of the guest bedroom Kai was staying in and knocked on the door, all stealthy to my best ability.

Kai slid it open a few inches, just enough to glare at me through the narrow gap like I was a cockroach that he couldn’t quite reach. Or didn’t want to.

“Hey,” I whispered. “I wanna talk. Could you let me in?”

“Why?” Kai bellowed, not lowering his voice at all.

“Shhh!” I raised a finger to my mouth and darted a quick glance behind me; the corridor was completely empty, but I didn’t trust at all that Ralf wasn’t tailing me again behind some corner. “‘Cause it’s kinda hard to talk through the door,” I added, turning back to Kai.

He kept glaring at me for a few more seconds, then to my pleasant surprise slid the door a bit further open so I could slip in. He had only lit one small table lamp in the otherwise dark room. We had given him one of the guest suites that had been furnished in an orthodox way instead of traditionally Eastern, to make foreign guests feel more at home. It actually looked a bit like Max’s bedroom that I’d seen in our video calls, with a similar tall bed and a carpet floor.

“So uh,” I said once Kai had closed the door, spreading my arms awkwardly, not sure where to begin. “I know you’re not exactly happy to be here, but I didn’t invite you here with any bad intentions, you know.”

Kai folded his arms across his chest. “I was ordered here by Hiwatari Souichirou.”

_Yikes._ Calling his own grandfather by his full name - they really weren’t close at all, were they?

“Well, yeah…” I brought my own hands behind my back. “But I may have, well, endorsed him a little. Or actually that’s exactly what I did.”

“Why?” Kai asked again. I was quickly learning that it was his staple response to pretty much anything.

“Because I want to know more about you, and I knew that’d never happen as long as you stayed in the South. Your old man took the talkpad from you and all.”

Kai tilted his head, looking like he didn’t fully understand what I was saying. “What do you want to know about me?” he asked.

“Everything! I want us to be friends, like I am with Max and Rei already - I mean, with Genbu-ou and Byakko-ou.

“Friends.”

“Yeah.” It was hard to tell whether Kai repeated the word with contempt, amusement, acceptance or what. His face was just a mask of indifference.

“So you wanted me to come here… to be friends.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay.”

“Huh?” I blinked, stunned by the nonchalant answer. Kai was still standing in the hostile stance of his arms crossed, staring at me with a stern frown - and, apparently, willing to be my friend.

“I heard you’re the boss of this place, so if that’s your order, then I’ll be a friend,” Kai said, perfectly serious.

It was hard to not just let my jaw drop and stare at him wide-eyed, which I knew to be a rude response. But the way he spoke was so absurd. I didn’t even know where to begin with correcting him.

“No, umm, I’d say Gramps- my grandfather is the boss here, and that’s not - oh geez.” I scratched my head, my eyes aimlessly wandering around the guest suite. “It’s not an order. I just genuinely wanna be friends.”

I left his room soon after that, against my own plans of sitting him down to tell me everything I wanted to know. I understood that that’d need to wait for a bit; Kai’s antisociality was even worse than I’d expected, and now I felt like it’d be better to give him some space, to let him see what kind of place the East was first, and what kind of person I was. To let him see that he wasn't here to follow anyone's orders.

But the thing that haunted me the most as I slipped into my own bed that night was the obliviousness Kai spoke with about being friends, and the awful suspicion now crept into my heart that, perhaps, Kai had never had any friends and didn’t know what the word meant.


	22. Seiryuu-ou VIII

Whatever my noble intentions about giving Kai some space had been, they were rendered useless by everyone else during the first week of Kai’s stay. Everyone wanted a piece of him: all the news outlets, TV channels, other nobles, even shopping centres. Garland, the archduke of the mansion of Amiboshi, invited us over to a huge banquet in his manor, and it seemed to be attended by every single member of Eastern nobility - and Garland’s own family, which was a big one. His sisters and brothers were all immensely popular athletes, which in turn made the whole event turn into another media circus. I could almost taste Kai’s disgust while he sat next to me in that party. And he ate nothing; he rarely ate in front of other people, as I’d come to notice by now. The servants learnt to take his meals to the guest quarters instead.

Similarly, other officials of Tsuno made Kai tour around the city and wanted to exhibit all the tourist attractions they’d poured their money into: the temples, the bridges, the monuments, the national museum, the villas and ruins and the television tower. I was pretty sure Kai didn’t give a shit about any of them. I, on the other hand, got a chance to absorb some local facts from the tour, most of which I had probably already heard before but never cared enough about; but I kept thinking back to the way Max had introduced his home palace to us, how he’d been so knowledged and proud of it, and I had a silent determination to become as knowledged about Tsuno and Cherrywood.

The task of building my relations with Kai to the status of friendship was a slow and arduous one. He really didn’t speak much at all. When I attempted to sit down with him and ask him about the place he lived in, he said that the sky was a different colour.  _Well duh,_  even I knew that much. I wanted to know what Chousa and the Sand Lily Castle were like, what kind of food he liked to eat, whether he could move around the town freely like me and Max or was an isolated king like Rei. I was inclined to believe the latter even without asking, though. The way Kai kept ogling everything in Cherrywood gave me the impression that he was taken aback by how different everything was - or I could have been completely wrong and he was judging how shabby Cherrywood was compared to Sand Lily, what did I know. He didn’t speak his mind anyway.

Since Kai seemed to like wandering around, I showed him around the castle with what I knew about it, little by little. I was far from Max’s expertise about Snow Glory, and even Mihael seemed to know more about Cherrywood’s history and stuff, but judging from Kai's disinterest in touring the tourist attractions, I figured he maybe didn't care to hear random trivia about the place anyway. I showed him around the main castle, the several consecutive halls built next to each other (the purpose of which I wasn't even too familiar with in some cases), and the right wing with the living quarters of me and Gramps and Ralf. And I showed him the baths and the tea rooms, and the fencing and archery practice halls, and finally the garden.

I'd always been a bit reserved about the garden myself, not because I didn't like it, but because it was just so big and easy to get lost in; in area, it took up way more space than all the castle buildings together. The premises closest to the castle were jam-packed with trees, round bushes, trees with flowers, bushes with flowers, decorative boulders and tiny bridges crossing over equally tiny ponds, all connected with paths going here and there, lined with wooden benches and - you guessed it - more flowers. It was all systematically random and unsymmetrical, neat while also being total chaos. One wider path ran deeper into the garden, and that paved path was lined by the famous cherry blossom trees of Cherrywood, the biggest in the whole world, or so they were boasted by the locals at least. These were the trees in their special blue bloom this moon, but with stray blotches of pink where some flower had failed to follow its peers’ suit for whatever reason. I wasn’t really knowledged about plants, so I couldn’t even name the majority of the flowers in our garden, nor did I know the specifics of cherry blossoms turning blue every Sowmoon.

The heart of the garden, as in the central point of it, was a grass labyrinth, a sphere made up of meticulously cut grass hedges or decorative bushes. It wasn’t actually much of a labyrinth at all, as it was made up of two symmetrically cut halves, but as a kid it had felt like a real maze to me. Maybe it still did - I rarely went this deep into the garden anymore these days. From the ground level it was hard to tell the shape of the labyrinth, anyway.

The very back of the garden I visited even more seldom, mostly due to the ground taking a sharp turn upwards into a steep slope, and getting to the top required climbing a hellish stone stairway. The path also narrowed significantly towards those stairs, from the light, paved avenue into a tiny pathway in the shade of the trees. I had always found that part of the garden kinda eerie, and it didn’t help that instead of benches and flowers, it was decorated with random stone lanterns and other structures that loomed between the trees, standing there like mute guards made of stone patrolling the grounds. As a kid, one of my dumber pastimes had been spooking myself on purpose by sneaking around that part of the garden and imagining that the stones were alive, covering my eyes and peering through the gaps between my fingers, convinced that some stone guard had ever so slightly moved while I wasn’t looking. I stopped doing that after Hitoshi once scared me out of my wits by jumping at me from behind one of the statues. Asshole.

The stone stairway up the slope was also lined with stone lanterns on both sides. At the very top was a shrine for Seiryuu, which I hadn’t visited in years. When had the last time been again? I didn’t remember, it had obviously been too long; if I had been there more often to pay my respects to the dragon, maybe Seiryuu would have favoured me more and given me my magic by now. But the actual shrine wasn’t all that interesting, just an ancient thing of wood and stone and not like the grand ones that tourists liked, so I wasn’t convinced that the actual Seiryuu cared about it either. I wouldn’t have, if I was an omnipotent legendary being.

Maybe I shouldn’t even say that I was surprised by Kai’s reactions to things because, knowing almost nothing about him, he kept constantly surprising me with everything he did. Nevertheless, I was surprised to see how intrigued he was by the garden. It quickly became his favourite place in Cherrywood, or at least he really liked being there. Whenever I wasn’t sure where to find him, I tried the garden first - although it took a while to find him, since it was the perfect place for hiding yourself from other people’s eyes. Kai’s hair helped, though, as it usually stuck out against all the green like a beacon of blaring scarlet. But in the evenings especially, he was really good at camouflaging himself somewhere in there. I didn’t really know if he was purposefully avoiding me or Mihael or someone else, or if he just liked lying around in the grass.

To me, it was a mystery why he’d enjoy feeding himself to the ants. I tried it one day when I found Kai in the garden like that; I lay down on the grass next to him, my eyes pointing straight at the arch of the bright blue sky, and put my hands behind my head. A couple of cotton candy-like clouds were floating lazily by, as if enjoying the warmth of the afternoon, without any hurry to reach their destination.

“What’s so fun about this?” I wondered out loud.

No answer. I turned to look at Kai; his eyes were closed.

So _this_ was what he did in the garden. Napping.

I remained in my position, supporting myself on one elbow, examining Kai’s sleeping face. While awake, he hardly ever showed anything other than a consistent condemning frown, even when he remained quiet and didn’t outright express discontent with something. Now he almost looked like a different person altogether, with his features blissfully relaxed. It was so soft, somehow, so unlike him - the him that I knew so far, anyway.

I studied his eyelashes, long and with just a hint of that brilliant red that his crimson-coloured hair carried. The four triangles on his cheeks created a harsh contrast with his unusually pale skin, almost giving the impression of having been painted with fresh blood. I hadn’t ever seen Kai without the triangles, so I assumed they were actually on his skin and not just painted on every day. Suddenly I was possessed by an unbearable urge to try and see if I could smudge them a little, just to be sure if they were paint or not. I heaved myself closer and reached out a hand to try.

Kai’s arm shot up at once, grabbing my reached-out hand by the wrist. He opened his eyes, staring at me eye to eye, a lot closer than I had realised I was.

“What’re you doing?” he asked.

“You’re awake?” I blurted, accompanied with a nervous laughter. “I, uh, nothing. I wasn’t doing anything.” And I quickly jerked my hand off Kai’s clutch and backed away.

_Wait. Crap._ I was running late for my afternoon lecture by now, wasn’t I? A couple more exciting hours of listening to some gibber about the officials and the fish market in Ashitareboshi. Without another word, I jumped up to my feet and ran back to the castle, leaving Kai there to stare after me. (Not that I knew whether he was staring or not, but I thought I could feel his eyes on my back. Or perhaps that was just my wishful thinking.)


	23. Byakko-ou VIII

If only the purification period had freed me of the responsibility of attending the weekly council, that would have been great. Alas, it did not; and yet again, on the second week of Sowmoon and the third-to-last week of the purification, I was escorted into the hall by Olivier and made to take seat on that ridiculous throne just for show.

My general dislike for the formal nonsense wasn’t the only reason why my thoughts were particularly scattered that day. I hadn’t heard of Max in two days. Perhaps it didn’t sound like much, especially considering his position, but so far he had never failed to call me without at least presenting a reason beforehand for why he would be unavailable for a while. I had been expecting him to drop by two days ago, but the day had gone by without him making an appearance. I had tried to call him, and had tried ever since, but still hadn’t heard anything of him.

It was a strange sentiment to me, to be so worried about someone that I felt it as a physical ache in my body, as if something was cutting the flow of air into my lungs. I had been fixated on myself and my own selfish concerns for so long, I didn’t even remember the last time I felt this way. Perhaps I never had. If only I had at least known whether the silence was because Max had gone somewhere, or maybe the talkpad broke - I wanted to believe that it was one such alternative, and not that something had happened to him, or that he was doing this on purpose… No, I trusted Max enough to know that it wasn’t the latter. But I sure had a lot of time to paint all sorts of worst case scenarios while lying alone in my bedroom, waiting for the talkpad to ring.

The council could have brought a welcome distraction, something else to focus on for just a moment, but it was difficult just keeping my thoughts together. I drummed the golden armrest of the throne with my fingernails, impatient and absent-minded, and let the words uttered by the officers drift in through one ear and out the other without paying attention to a single word.

The only piece of information that I managed to make myself absorb - _because Max wanted me to keep him updated on the situation_ , I acknowledged in the back of my mind - was when the case of the mine in Gédào was brought up again. Because the miners hadn’t wanted to descend into the hole that they found in place of a tunnel, a couple of inquiry drones had been sent down instead. The drones had disappeared; neither could be retrieved once they had entered the pit, and they had also vanished from the radar on the way down. It really was starting to turn into a case of mystery now, and if I had been in a more alert state of mind, I might have found it much more intriguing than I did. But I only wanted the council to be over and done with, to go back in my bedroom and check the talkpad for any new messages. Once I reached the room, I decided to throw caution out of the window and call Max despite it being the middle of the day.

When the call connected, my heart made a strange, woozy sideways leap, as if in an attempt to dislocate itself; a deliberate sigh escaped my aching chest as a hologram image was projected in the air. The one taking the call was Giancarlo, not Max, but even the sight of the familiar knight with his curly hair and lazy eyes was enough to save me from the worst grip of anxiety.

“Hi there!” he said briskly and saluted with his hand. From the beginning of our acquaintance, he had been refreshingly informal and dropped all unnecessary formalities, which I had always been thankful of. “I know it’s disappointing seeing my mug instead of His Highness, but I’m acting as his answering machine for now. Oh, if you don't know, an answering machine is -”

“Is Max okay?” I interrupted him, almost attempting to grab the hologram by its sides, knowing that my hands would just go right through. “Where is he?”

“He’s sick in bed! I don’t know what kind of stunt His Highness pulled this time, but -” Giancarlo lowered his voice - “I found him collapsed on Sunday, by the storage room door he uses to go out. He’s mostly been sleeping since. He’s running a fever, but we’ve got good meds here so he’ll be fine in a couple of days.”

This information lifted most of the weight off my chest pained with worry; however, it was quickly replaced with concern of a different variety.

“So you don’t know what happened to him? Could he have been attacked or…?”

“Nothing of the sort has ever happened here, so I don’t think so. He’s got his invisibility magic, too. He was in plain sight though - and wet from head to toe, so I figured he’d dragged himself home after accidentally soaking himself and didn't exactly make it.”

“Impossible.” The word escaped my mouth at once; it was simply impossible for Max to accidentally fall in the water. I’d seen it myself so many times by now, how quickly he created that shield of magic just by stepping off the veranda. He had multiple types of magic to become untouchable by water, too. Unless he really was being threatened by something, there was no way he’d become incapable of using any all of a sudden.

Giancarlo sighed. “I know… And Her Majesty is freaking furious with me. Not that I can blame her. I've never liked this business of letting His Highness go alone.” Then Giancarlo shot me a sharp look and frowned, an expression that somehow didn’t suit his goofy face. “He was there again that day, wasn’t he? In your palace?” He had now lowered his voice to nothing but a whisper.

“What day? On Sunday?”

“Yes.”

“No, I thought he was coming over but he never did.”

“I’m pretty sure he left with that intention. But I never follow him, so I don’t actually know.”

I folded my arms inside my sleeves and remained thinking about this a long while after quitting the call with Giancarlo. Well, what really mattered  was that Max was okay - or would be okay, at least. My only personal experiences of being ill were hazardous; my previous sickness had lasted for over a moon and had me wish I had been dead at times. But Max’s case didn’t sound very severe, and Giancarlo didn’t seem worried about him, so maybe I ought to be at ease too.

Giancarlo promised me he’d prompt Max to call me back whenever he was well enough to do so. I’d have to wait until then to hear what had actually happened… Not really being able to do anything else for Max, I recorded him a video message of wishing him to get well soon and, as promised, updated him on the status of the mining incident. That was another mystery with no answers as of yet. There sure had been a lot of those lately...


	24. Genbu-ou VII

Day after day, hour after hour, there was nothing but a dizzying fog of drifting between dreams too restless to be remembered or described, and faint moments of awareness that left me wishing I'd been having dreams instead, so I wouldn't have felt the ache that hammered every part of my body like I was nothing but a lump of raw meat on a butcher’s bench. That’s exactly how I felt like.

When the moments of awareness gradually became more frequent and my thoughts clearer, I realised I’d been lying in bed, sick to the boot, for several days already. When I first woke up - _actually_ woke up and didn’t just drift from sleep to a confused state of being sort of awake - I was being visited by the doctor, a lady with long dark hair, who was in the process of measuring my fever. From her, I heard that I’d been sick for four days and that it was now Thursday, the eleventh of Sowmoon.

Not much else happened during my hours of consciousness. At one point Mama came to my room, visibly relieved and glad that I was okay, but also solitary in the way painfully characteristic to her. Even when she expressed that she cared, something was always slightly amiss in her performance. But she was always that way, and I was used to it.

She couldn't stay for long, and while leaving the room, she darted the deadliest of glares at Giancarlo. He’d been standing a bit to the side, cowering next to the wall as if pretending he wasn’t really there. Under the pressure of her ice-cold eyes, he responded to the glare by bowing deep and remained with his head hanging low until she was long gone. But when he spoke to me, he did a fine job not letting it show how pissed he was at me for making Mama scorn him like this, because it very obviously was my fault.

“How are you feeling, Your Highness?” he asked and came over to the bed.

“I’ve been better,” I said, my voice weak and rough and hard to control. “Feeling like a sack of stones.”

“You’ll be much better by tomorrow, now that you’re awake.”

Too weak to do much more than that, I let Giancarlo help me drink some water and take the medicine. He was right, though; by the evening of that same day the fever was going down and I could actually move around, if only a little. My limbs were all numb and disgustingly heavy from lying still for so long. I couldn’t wait to be able to use them properly again, but was glad to be able to eat dinner with my own hands, at least.

Once the tray of food was taken away and the door of my bedroom closed again, Giancarlo sat on the edge of my bed. Clearing his throat awkwardly, he turned to look at me. “So, er… Care to tell me what happened, Your Highness? I found you lying on the ground by the storage door like a drowned rat.”

I stared at the star pattern of my blanket in silence. I wished the sickness had taken the memory with it, but it hadn’t, and the cold, prickly sensation threatened to seize my insides again like an iron fist. I had no reason to lie to Giancarlo, but getting the truthful words out of my mouth was weirdly difficult. My head had begun to pound again, feeling disgustingly hot as if someone had lit a fire inside my skull. But it wasn’t because of the fever; it was my own heart that had begun to beat faster, rushing my blood to my aching head, from something akin to shame.

The full, honest story was as follows.

 

* * *

 

My visits to Rei’s place had become such a regular, even routine thing by now that I figured I could as well go a bit earlier than usual, and if Olivier was there, I'd stick around invisible again. I was confident that I could avoid being caught either way and was willing to do so if it meant getting to spend just a little while longer with Rei. So I dressed in my trusted mantle and sneaked out of the palace through the storage door rarely used by anyone, and spurted across the lake.

In all honesty, from the start, I hadn’t expected it to be so easy to sneak into the Tiger Maple Palace. I had expected the wall to follow the shape of the mountain, or magic that prevented intruders from trespassing or something else, but there really wasn’t anything like that. The ease of doing something so scandalous without being caught was downright titillating and had me hooked, and maybe a bit drunk with my own supposed cleverness.

When I arrived in my destination and emerged through the pond’s surface in my invisible bubble in the shade of the colossal palace, I was greeted by the heavy grey clouds lingering overhead in the Western sky, ready to come showering down any second. It couldn’t have been much later than around four in the afternoon, but the backyard of Rei’s manor bathed in murk and the lanterns had already been lit up, as was Rei’s bedroom.

The veranda door was open and I could see inside through the gap and the tall windows on both sides. Rei was there, sitting on the floor, but he wasn't alone. Despite maintaining my invisibility, I carefully retreated to hide in the shadow of a boulder protruding on the mountain side of the pond, in a spot where I could still see inside the palace but was too far away to hear anything that was spoken.

Rei was with the pink-haired girl, Mao. She sat behind him, both of them sideways to me, in an angle that made it difficult to make out their expressions very well. Mao was working on Rei’s hair with amazingly quick and dexterous fingers, creating a hairdo unlike anything I’d seen on him before, with something akin to a golden stick with butterflies or flowers made of jewels poking through the top of an elaborate braid, and parts of his hair hanging loosely on his shoulder like the delicate tail of a ribbon. I couldn't make out the words but she was almost constantly talking, in a chipper tone and with a content smile on her lips, despite the obvious concentration that the meticulous work required; with Rei's face mostly veiled by his front hair and his manner of speaking so subtle in general, I couldn't see nor hear whether he was talking back to her much.

After a while, Mao let go of the braid and ushered Rei to turn around. Her hands measured the part of his hair that framed his face, possibly wondering what to do with it, then tucked it behind Rei’s pointed ears. A delighted expression spread on her face as she brought her hands together to her chin. Rei didn’t seem quite as excited. They exchanged a few words; Mao gave a tinkling laugh and leaned closer to press a kiss on Rei’s forehead, now free of all the hair that usually covered his both temples. Then she lowered her face, keeping it really, really close to Rei’s, and -

I whirled around and pressed my back against the boulder I'd been crouching behind, my heart pounding. What I felt was difficult to describe - it was so sudden, so irrational and spontaneous. I brought a shaky hand to my chest just to make sure it hadn’t suddenly been pierced with a hot, sharp object of some kind, because I was burning - my insides were burning all over. My throat had been sewn shut and I couldn't breathe. I was suddenly being consumed by something I had never experienced before, and couldn’t have imagined even in my worst nightmares, and it muddled my consciousness with an array of uncontrollable emotions.

 _I don’t want to be here._ The thought was so pressing - more than a mere thought, it was an order, a desperate need to run away. I let myself sink below the surface and fumbled for the pendant inside my collar to call Genbu back out. I couldn’t focus; I could hardly get my fingers to obey, and magic that had always come so easily to me was suddenly hard to grasp. Once I had successfully reunited with Genbu, I grabbed the ridge of its shell like my life depended on it and began my way back home.

 

* * *

 

I didn’t really remember what had happened afterwards. From what Giancarlo had said, it sounded like I made it to the palace door but not inside, and I had soaked myself somewhere along the way, so my magic had probably failed at some point and I had made the rest of the way barely conscious. I seriously had no recollection of it whatsoever; I could only assume I had disassociated from the shock and the strain on my body.

“I went to the West,” I then began explaining, clutching the blanket with both hands, “but - Rei was with his fiancée, so I decided it wiser to not butt in and turned back. I must have tired myself by using up too much magic and blacked out on my way home.”

None of it was really a lie; nevertheless, Giancarlo seemed to deliberately misunderstand something about it, because he answered by nodding his head repeatedly and making a weird, prolonged “ah” sound.

“I see,” he snickered, “so _that’s_ the kind of deal it was. I totally get it now.”

I didn’t even want to know what he was imagining that I’d meant. Recalling the scene in all detail had made my insides knot up again, and breathing had already been difficult enough without it. Folding over and giving in for a coughing fit, I pulled the blanket up to my chest.

The startled Giancarlo sprang off the bed at once. “Whoa - I, I’ll go get some more water…!” And a second later he'd sprinted off, which I was pretty grateful of. Not because I wanted water, but because I didn't want to hear anything he could potentially have said next, because I knew it was all stupid and unnecessary.

I buried my forehead in the blanket and took a deep breath. My head and stomach both felt like someone had dumped a load of hot coals on me, and the air I breathed burnt just as hot and refused to reach my lungs. But even worse than the physical pain was the storm of emotions raging inside me, threatening to demolish everything on its way and tear me in half like a strip of paper, which was about how thin I felt myself stretched right now.

Rationally thinking, none of this made any sense. I had known that Rei was engaged. I had even seen his fiancée before, during one of the calls. It was a thing that nobles did; they were arranged for suitable marriages. It happened all the time. And when couples got together, they did _those_ sort of things. Touched each other. Kissed each other.

And most importantly, I had never, not even once for one fleeting moment of insanity, lived in hope that the two of us could cross the line of becoming something more than friends. It was the most unreasonable, illogical, a completely preposterous thought.

But why, then, was I hurting so much now, after witnessing something that should have been of no importance to me whatsoever?

 _Am I in love with him?_ I asked myself, horror-struck by the possibility. _Am I? Since when? Please, Goddess, if it’s like this, I don’t want it._

When Giancarlo came back a couple of minutes later I decided to feign sleeping, cocooned inside the thick blanket with my face carefully hidden against the pillows. I heard him leave the glass of water on the nightstand. But I didn’t hear him leave the room again.


	25. Seiryuu-ou IX

I had a dream of Seiryuu one night. Except, it felt way too real for just a dream.

In the dream I was flying, floating in the midst of cotton candy clouds, together with Seiryuu right beside me. It was enormous, the length of its head alone bigger than my entire body, and each of its bumpy horns the length of my arm; its colossal, snake-like body filled the entire sky, curled in infinitely repeating loops, its azure scales shining blindingly bright where sunlight touched them. It had two slithering whiskers that licked the air on both sides of its head, and each of its short legs ended in a set of razor-sharp claws the size of a kitchen knife.

But I wasn’t scared, at least not of Seiryuu itself. It was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t decipher the language it was speaking. I placed my hands on its impossibly long snout and called out to it again and again, saying that I couldn’t understand, that I knew I really needed to but just couldn't, and it was all useless. Something crucial was missing between us. But I knew that Seiryuu was trying to tell me something important, important enough that it had tried to connect with me despite knowing of that something that was missing.

At the end of the dream, Seiryuu began shrinking and shriveling up; its withering body suddenly turned bright green, the exact prevailing colour of our castle garden. In a matter of seconds, Seiryuu had transformed entirely; and it was my turn next, my arms rapidly being entwined in vines that suddenly broke out in flowers of all colours...

And then I woke up.

As my consciousness was pulled back to present, a set of unusual sounds carried to my ears through the gap of my open window - the weather had been mild enough lately for me to keep the window open overnight. I could hear short shouts at steady intervals, and the occasional _pock_ of wood hitting wood.

I jumped out of bed, eager to shed the disturbing unease of my dream, and hurried over to the window to pull the curtain aside. My bedroom had a view to a strip of the front of the garden, and there on the walkway I saw Gramps and Kai, in full swing with a pair of wooden swords. Not only were they having a playful match in perfectly good spirit, Kai was wearing a set of Eastern garments instead of his uniform which I had so far never seen him without. They weren’t wearing any armour, but for all I could see, the wooden practice swords weren't making contact with anything but each other anyway.

“Hey!” I shouted out to them, pushing the window frame all the way up. “What’s this ruckus now, first thing in the morning?!” Despite my cheeky words, the sight had me thrilled. Not only was Kai being all buddy-buddy with my Gramps, he’d also just turned out to know fencing. And the hakama didn’t look half bad on him either.

“Good morning, Takao!” Gramps turned to greet me, lowering his sword. Kai followed suit immediately. “Rising early is another way to train one’s spirit, as you should know. You should take notes from Kai here.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Wow, first name terms now? Maybe I really had been missing out on something by sleeping in so late every day. I’d seen Kai be fairly amiable with Gramps around, but I hadn’t exactly heard Kai talk to him or anything, even less seen them hanging out together like this.

I got changed out of pajamas and, as much as I'd have wanted to join Kai and Gramps in the garden, made my way to the breakfast parlour; no matter how much my head was buzzing with this new information I’d acquired first thing in the morning, no day could begin without a proper breakfast. That much Gramps had managed to hammer in my head.

Gramps soon entered the room himself. He planted a hand on my shoulder while I was still in the middle of eating.

“I have a new task for you, Takao,” he announced, beaming. “You and Kai shall provide a little show for the garden festival next week. A fencing performance for the guests. How do you fancy the idea?”

I almost choked on the bread roll that had been on its way to my stomach. “What performance?” I asked, coughing.

“Just a friendly match for entertainment. I'll have a platform constructed in the garden for it.”

Sounded like Gramps had pretty much decided on this by himself already. “Since when have you two been best pals, anyway?”

“Men of equal spirit flock together.”

And then he was gone again. Gramps always did this, appeared out of nowhere, threw some corny one liners around for cryptical metaphors of his actual thoughts, and left.

A fencing performance, though… The garden festival was a flower-viewing event that always took place on the third Sunday of Sowmoon, and it was one of the few times a year when our garden was opened to the public and actually served as the royal park that it was also addressed as, rather misleadingly given that it really was a public park only for a couple days a year. Apparently it would be a little special this year - I had never given any kind of “performance” for the festival.

For a passing moment I wondered how Kai felt about this idea, then remembered that he’d probably just take it as another order to carry out, like our so-called friendship. I wanted to imagine that we’d spent a fairly good first week together, even if I hadn't exactly had a single decent conversation with Kai yet. A part of me just wanted to pin him against a wall and demand him to spill the beans about all his family secrets, but that probably wasn't a good way to go around it if I also wanted him to trust me and call me his friend one day.

I was deep in such thoughts while I finished my breakfast, then strolled back to my bedroom. I was itching to tell about my dream and newest discoveries to Max and Rei, but perhaps it was a bit too early still… Besides, Max had gotten himself into some trouble, first gotten himself sick and then some, so we hadn't been talking too much lately.

I pulled the door to my bedroom open and saw Ralf, standing in the middle of the room. In his hands he had the talkpad, and it was projecting the image of a recorded video message in the air in front of him. It was the second message sent to me by Hiwatari Souichirou.

Slamming the door shut behind me, I launched myself at Ralf.

“‘The hell are you doing!? You’re not allowed to touch my stuff!” I tore the talkpad off his hands and closed it, making the screen disappear in the same go. Ralf didn’t try to stop me at all; he had only turned to stare at me with a scowl that could probably have killed someone.

“Your Highness,” he only said, and it was weird how those two words alone could carry such a loaded message.

“Seriously, I could have you fired right now if I wanted to!” I barked, my own pulse pounding against my ears. Then, after a moment of glaring at each other, during which I realised just how crappy the situation was, I began pleading instead: “Please, Ralf, don’t tell Gramps about this! He doesn’t need to know the truth - it wouldn’t help anyone, only ruin everything.”

“To me, your orders precede those of His Majesty,” Ralf assured me, which was immensely relieving to hear; on the other hand, Ralf’s voice didn’t carry any sympathy whatsoever. “I knew that the whole arrangement was suspicious. There was no way Suzaku-ousama would have come here of his own will. Moreover, Your Highness, if you plead confidentiality from me, you must stop lying to me first yourself.”

“I know.” My shoulders slumped, and the talkpad slipped off my fingers and onto the floor as I slouched forward, completely defeated. “I’m sorry. I mean, really - I apologise, Ralf. I just really wanted some way to connect with Kai, and I knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get him here. This whole thing means a lot to me.”

Ralf sighed. He picked up the talkpad off the floor and handed it back to me.

“Thank you. I forgive you, Your Highness, as long as you stay honest from now on. I’m disappointed by you conspiring with Hiwatari Souichirou behind His Majesty’s back, but I do understand your good intentions with Suzaku-ousama. You have made good allies of the other kings as well.”

“They’re not _allies_ , they’re my friends.” I squeezed the blue plastic pad in my hands. “Also, if we’re talking about honesty, Ralf, can you tell me why you don’t trust Mihael? You’ve got some reason for it, right? I know you’re not so vain that you’d just dislike him for his personality or something.”

Ralf's expression, which had momentarily softened to an almost alarming extent, hardened back to his regular seriousness.

“The reason why I've remained quiet of the matter,” he said, “is that I’m only in the middle of gathering evidence myself. But I have witnessed him sneaking around in places where he shouldn’t have any business in, and perhaps you didn’t notice it, Your Highness, but he displayed some suspicious behaviour during Suzaku-ousama’s arrival ceremony.”

“What? What behaviour?” I hadn’t even taken any notice of Mihael there whatsoever. Had he even been there? Clearly he had.

“I may be wrong, and I apologise if I am, but the impression I got was that he may have recognised the person riding the holy beast. The apprentice knight from the South. My perception of the situation was that both wished to pretend ignorance, after having been surprised to see each other.”

I racked my brain, trying to remember anything such. I’d been so absorbed in the moment back then, succumbed in that nervous excitement of getting to see Kai - but then I remembered... I _did_ take notice of Claude’s face changing at one point, for just a fleeting moment, when he looked at Ralf. No... Had he been looking at Mihael, then? But the moment had lasted for a few seconds at best; how had Ralf managed to notice and process something like this in such a short time?

“So… So, what?” I then said, slowly. “Is it weird for fellow squires to know each other?” It did sound like an unlikely coincidence, though. But as of now, I had no idea what to think of it. I wasn’t familiar with where exactly squires and pages came from; Mihael had earned his position by being the best out of the royal squire candidates. Moreover, this could all have been Ralf's imagination, his paranoia and innate prejudice towards anyone from the South.

“I don’t know,” Ralf admitted, “and I promise to not be too hasty with condemning him without actual proof. I know you are in friendly relations with the apprentice knight. Now, excuse me, but I must take my leave. And I apologise for touching your belongings without your permission, Your Highness.” He bowed deep and left my room.

_Well, that was something._ I had to confess that my heart suddenly felt a whole lot lighter, now that Ralf knew all about my secret. I didn't enjoy lying to begin with and was glad I only needed to lie to Gramps now, and _that_ didn’t bother me so much, especially now that I'd seen how well Kai actually got along with him.

Now all I needed to do was keep my friends' secrets safe. Remembering that I’d meant to call Max - and perhaps Rei, but he probably wasn’t available this early to the day - I lifted the talkpad’s lid again.


	26. Genbu-ou VIII

It was hard to tell what the time was when I woke up again. My eyes were swollen and nose stuffy from crying, and only part of it could be blamed on the cold. The pillow under my head was totally disgusting now and really needed to be changed.

I heaved myself into a sitting position and looked around the room. I was alone, the glass of water still on my nightstand, now full of tiny bubbles. I reached to flip the switch on the wall behind my bed and the ceiling of my room lit up with faded colours, soothing blue with a hint of pink in a group of lacy clouds. The round lamp in the middle, representing the Sun, shone a blinding white. That meant it was morning.

I spotted my talkpad next to the glass. Giancarlo must have put it there; I had no memory of it being on the nightstand last night, nor had I had the energy to think about it until now anyway. It was flashing a red light and I immediately felt my stomach twitch a little at the sight. Red meant stacked unanswered interactions, and the thought of finding something from Rei was suddenly so unnerving to me. It was a strange feeling, really, and hard to explain; I had never before felt anything but joy from seeing that Rei had tried to contact me; now something this minor - or it should have been minor - was enough to make me dread it instead. I didn’t know if I was ready to face him, or even to see his name on the screen. I was… well… frankly, I was ashamed of myself.

Nevertheless, I grabbed the talkpad and opened the lid. Just like expected, my breath got caught in my throat at the sight of the activity log. Rei had tried to call me several times on Sunday and Monday, and there was a recorded message from him from Tuesday. Takao had called me once as well. When I checked the activity log, I could also see one _answered_ call from Rei… That must have been Giancarlo’s doing; he must have noticed how often the pad was ringing and taken the call for me.

My heart was beating irrationally and uncomfortably hard as I opened the message from Rei, never having been hammered by as many conflicting emotions as when the hologram screen appeared. Rei’s look of heartfelt concern, his melancholic golden eyes that had no idea how harshly they pierced right through me at the other end - that alone was almost too much for me to handle right now. But I couldn't make myself not watch his message, either. Seeing him had an intoxicating effect on me.

In the message he confirmed my suspicions by first saying that Giancarlo had told him everything, and that he hoped my sickness was nothing serious. He seemed excessively worried about it because of his own experiences. Then he told me about the latest news from the West, because I had said I was intrigued by the case - the sheer sweetness of the gesture was _definitely_ too much for me right now. Why did he have to be so kind? I’d almost rather have been punched in the face by him, knocked back to my senses. It woud probably have been less painful, too.

Rei ended the message with a get-well-soon and by saying that he’d be waiting for my call when I was back to health. And then, like always, no matter how close we were by now, he gave a polite bow before stopping the recording.

I let out a profound sigh. Then I played the message again.

I examined Rei’s features carefully as he spoke, from the pearly stripes of his dark hair and the amber gold eyes, down to his pale lips and neck and the ghostly white collar of his robes; and each beautiful thought I had of his appearance was followed by another of a much less noble caliber: those silky strands that Mao’s fingers had so skillfully woven together; every part of him that Mao alone got to touch; and so on. I closed my eyes and lowered my head to place a cheek against my arm, listening to him talk without actually listening to a single word. His voice was like a brook, a delicate spring that I could have listened softly trickle down to my ear for hours on end. And then I thought of all the words said in his voice that would never be meant for me.

To counter this naïve bitterness that stubbornly followed, I tried to scoop up a voice of reason from within myself next, one that would confirm I was only confused somehow; that my supposed feelings for Rei were just a delusion of some kind. But no such voice emerged. Every fibre of my being responded to the sight of him and the sound of his voice with warmth and admiration and longing that made me ache inside. I was no expert in the matter, of course, but I was pretty sure of the quality of that undeniable feeling. Until now my feelings for Rei had been something I quietly cherished, nurtured as undefined fondness for him, but jealousy turned out to be a vicious thing that had forced all the ugliest secrets of my heart out. Surely I wouldn’t have reacted in such a way to seeing a mere friend with his fiancée, right? It was a sad conclusion I came to.

If only I had never seen the two of them together. It was so stupid; I wanted to scold myself for my childish reaction, but the spite had already seeped through and poisoned my heart.

_But think about it_ , I ordered myself, rolling over to my back and laying an arm over my tired eyes. _Really think about it for a second._ If I truly cared about Rei, it really wasn’t my job to tar myself with petty jealousy over this. He and Mao were childhood friends - she was someone he could confide in, someone who could be his ally even inside the palace walls. And once they were married, she could take him out and change his entire life, give it so much more purpose than sitting locked inside ever did. Her existence ought to be such a powerful driving force for him, and it could only make things better for him.

As soon as I had worded these thoughts to myself inside my head, I immediately knew why they didn’t soothe me in the least. _I wanted to be the one who does that for him._ From the beginning of our acquaintance, I had been envisioning myself as Rei’s sole saviour; I’d been so selfish, imagining that I’d make a difference that nobody else could make. But that really wasn’t true, was it? He’d told me himself that Mao alone had always refused to call him the king. It proved that she saw him the way I saw him. And she’d been there for him for so much longer than me - and would also be in the future. And what would I be? The king of another kingdom, nothing more.

I should have thought of Mao as my most crucial ally, really, as someone who could save Rei when I couldn’t. But it was just so painful. So painful and unfair. It was all too much for me to accept at once; and right now, I wanted to dwell upon that childish jealousy and let myself hate her, if only for a while. It was so much easier than trying to accept it all. Tormented by a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts and emotions that pulled me in all directions simultaneously, feeling like a ragdoll about to burst from its seams, I turned over to my stomach again on the bed and couldn’t do anything but sob in scorching self pity.

Sooner than I would have liked, Giancarlo came to see me. He was followed by the doctor, who performed a check on me and confirmed that my fever had gone down and that I ought to be back to normal in two days or so. Neither really commented on my sorry state.

While I later had breakfast that I could hardly swallow, my bedsheets were all changed to clean ones. Still too weak to do much anything else, I then returned to bed again.

It was an extraordinarily boring day; rather embarrassed of my fit in the morning, I avoided thinking about Rei for the rest of the day and passed time by playing some games and by calling Takao, who gave me the rundown of the first few days of Kai’s stay. Things weren’t too glorious for him, either, much like I had expected. It was a bit of a stretch to expect Kai to suddenly become a social butterfly and to magically like Takao. Not that I didn't believe in magic, obviously.

Later in the afternoon, I was again visited by Mama. She had her hair tied up to a bun at the back of her head, so I supposed she’d dropped by in the middle of doing paperwork.

“How are you feeling?” she asked and sat on the edge of my bed, raising a hand to ruffle my hair a little. “Did you take your medicine yet?”

“Unfortunately.” I grimaced, showing her the empty cup. “Tastes nasty. I feel crappy, but I’m okay.”

She nodded and brought her hands to her lap. She was sitting with her back perfectly straight, and I could immediately tell from her cool countenance that she hadn’t come to my room just to console me.

“Getting yourself sick this way isn’t like you, Max. What happened?”

Ah. So it was an interrogation. I gave her a dismissive shrug, averting my eyes. “Guess I’d been slacking with eating and fainted from using so much magic. I don’t really know - it’s weird to myself too, and I hardly remember a thing.”

“I’m sure you understand that you cannot pull stunts like this, sneak around using your magic. Giancarlo told me that you left him to stay in guard so he could lie for you while you’re out. You’re not a child anymore, Max. You can’t go around doing as you please.”

I looked down at my hands, fiddling with my blanket. “I know. Sorry, Mama.”

“As you know," she carried on, “your reputation among the nobles isn’t exactly praiseworthy at the moment. Word about childish antics like this will spread fast and far, and will probably be used against you.”

I clenched my fists, squeezing the cloth between my fingers. I would have wanted to yell that I didn’t care what the nobles thought, that my _reputation_ was the last thing on my mind right now, and that the exact reason why I went around invisible was that I didn’t want anyone to know what I was up to; but I couldn’t say it, because I knew she was right. Someone out there would surely be eager to stir something against me.

“They already hate me for existing, though,” I managed to mumble in response. “Could study law night and day and they’d still say I’m nothing but a snotty kid.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” Mama placed a hand on my arm that was shaking from all the contained frustration. “But even if the title of the king was handed to you by Genbu, you must still earn your place in the eyes of the society, Max.”

I didn’t have the physical nor mental capacity to care about any of this right now. Maybe she was right; maybe the reason the nobles didn't like me was because I took being the king for granted; but what about it, I just didn't care.

“Can we have this discussion some other time?” I asked and slumped a little in the bed. “I’m still kinda out of it. It’s a bit too much.”

“Yes, of course.” She removed her hand, but didn’t leave her seat on the bed. “Is there anything more you need? Hot chocolate?”

“No.” I hesitated for a moment, contemplating if I should reach out to her with my sentimental problems somehow, but quickly decided against it; she may have been a woman, but I had a hard time imagining Mama giving me any sound romantic advice, especially in a case like this. "I'd want to see Papa, though. Is he away on a business trip again?”

“He'll be back this weekend. I'm sure he'll bring you something special from Offisupply.”

That was easy to guess. Papa had hardly been home all Sowmoon. With that, Mama stood up and left my room.


	27. Byakko-ou IX

I absorbed whatever knowledge I could on the countless different forms of martial arts from library books, but there was only so much one could do with mere books. Soon enough, it became obvious that I would need an actual tutor if I wanted to begin learning any of it in practice. The library also included a video series of traditional Western martial arts, but I had nothing to watch them with; as politely and candidly as possible, I tried to approach Olivier with the idea that perhaps I could be given hold of a device to watch recordings and films with. I told him that I was getting majorly bored by now, and there were two weeks left of the purification period still, so I might end up doing something desperate if this continued.

Olivier’s response was a nonchalant “no” and that I should either hone my calligraphy skills or learn to paint if I was so bored, or that he could ask the court to bring me some entertainment into the palace. Naturally, practising magic for a pastime was not an option, so I didn’t even ask about it.

Rather depressed by both the lack of progress and not having been able to talk to Max in several days, I instead began spending time staring at the sky in my favourite tower for hours, and taking absurdly long baths. The bathhouse had become the most relaxing place in the palace, but its downside was not being able to entertain myself with my magic in secret; even with my limited knowledge of basic science, I figured it wasn’t wise to use my magic while surrounded by water and wasn’t quite so desperate that I’d have wished to kill myself while trying. Well, due to Olivier’s pestering, I ended up wasting a couple of hours a day doing calligraphy. Despite having next to no passion for the hobby whatsoever, I had to admit that I learnt to feel a bit more relaxed with the brush in my hands so it wasn’t too bad a pastime, if only massively meaningless.

It was Friday night when Max finally called me. He was sitting in his bed wearing an absolutely darling nightgown with a little bow in the front (he had told me before that his mother chose his clothes), and his face was flushed and puffy and his disposition only a ghost of his usual cheeriness. He definitely still looked unwell, but it was nevertheless relieving to see him again.

“Thanks for the message,” he said and brought a frilly sleeve to his face, “it was so nice of you. I really want to know what's gonna happen next with that tunnel thing.”

“Me too.” I hesitated then with what to say next, not sure if I should have asked what had happened to him; I was curious, but seeing how miserable Max still looked, it somehow didn’t feel appropriate. I decided to instead tell him about my own uneventful week, and then we talked about Takao and Kai for a while.

It could have been like any other call of ours if Max wasn’t in such low spirits. He did his best to feign his usual vigour but was so obviously weighed down by his condition, I even wondered if he was in pain that he just didn’t word to me. If only I could have done anything to help him...

“You really look like you need more rest,” I finally told him. “I don’t want to force you to stay up. We can call again tomorrow.”

“No, wait…!”

I had already been about to move the talkpad aside, and to wish him good night and a get-well-soon and end the call, when Max startled me by raising his voice all of a sudden. He looked me straight in the eye - for the first time during the entire call, I realised - with an intense expression.

“Can I come over tomorrow?” he asked.

I could feel my ears jump from surprise and disbelief.

“What?” I uttered. “Tomorrow? Are you even well enough to get out of bed yet?”

“I’ll be tomorrow! The medicine’s almost cured me already.”

I didn’t know what to say. Max seriously didn’t seem like he’d be fine by tomorrow and now he also appeared a bit mentally unstable which was all the more alarming, his eyes so filled with peculiar anxiety that I worried that the blue of his eyes would overflow down to his cheeks if I said no.

“Max… you know I want to see you too,” I said, “but I also want you to get well first. If you strain yourself, you could end up even worse.”

Ultimately we ended the call without Max actually saying he _wouldn’t_ drop by tomorrow, so I genuinely worried he just might be crazy enough to do it. It wasn’t like I could stop him - I wouldn’t not let him in if he appeared at my door sick. The fact that he was claiming to be well enough already while looking so out of it only made him seem more ill to me.

I now felt so sick from worry that the green tea I’d had earlier was making its way back up my throat. I could only place my hopes on Giancarlo to stop Max from doing anything stupid.

 

* * *

 

Giancarlo did not stop Max from doing something stupid. I really did find him behind the veranda door the next evening, when I returned to my bedroom after having had another verbal wrestling match with Olivier over tea (he had found me messing around with the lanterns with magic and was livid that I hadn’t given up on practising it).

“I told you I’d be well enough,” Max said and pranced inside while shedding his cloak and boots as usual. I had to admit that the change from yesterday was evident, and his step was perfectly steady and his face back to normal, which in his case meant back to its usual pallid colour.

Seeing Max the same as always lifted such a weight off my chest that my own legs collapsed under me and I dropped on the floor, with a sigh so deep that it made me feel lightheaded for a second or two.

“I can’t believe you sometimes,” I said. “I was here worrying I’d have to reveal everything and call in a doctor if you really appeared here.”

Max - after momentarily looking startled at me randomly collapsing, but then seated himself opposite me on a cushion when he realised I was fine - only grinned at me and opened the clasps of the bag he always brought Northern snacks with him. This time, however, he took out something different.

“I brought you a little present, Rei.”

The item he took out was a flat metallic rectangle, folded like a book just like the talkpad but a bit bigger. It had a slot on the side, like a spot for inserting something.

“It’s a disc player,” Max explained as he handed it over, “for watching video discs, since you mentioned Olivier wouldn’t give you one. You can use the same earbuds with it. I considered bringing a laptop at first, but this one’s smaller so I thought it’d be better in your case.”

I had never even seen a disc player before. It really was a lot like the talkpad, only a bit bigger and wider in shape. Like with the talkpad, I also recognised the name of the manufacturer to be a Western company. So many things were made out here that I had no access to whatsoever.

“It’s my old one and I’ve managed to lose its charger somewhere,” Max added, “but I figured you can maybe charge it with your own hands now.”

“Thank you,” I finally managed to say, awestruck with surprise and gratitude. “It didn’t even cross my mind to ask you for something like this. It’s going to be a huge help!”

“Right? You just put a disc in here and then pick whatever dimensions you want - or choose the default, maybe that’s easier…”

I didn’t have any discs in my room, obviously, so we couldn’t try it in practice; but I was nevertheless stoked. Just like Max had anticipated, the device’s battery began to charge when I focused my magic on it, slowly but surely. I hadn’t actually thought about it before, but I had probably been charging the talkpad with my magic too, as I’d never used a charger with it.

We were soon back to our usual antics, eating snacks and gossiping about all sorts of things - everything except Max’s abrupt sickness. He was always the first one to spill even the most mundane details of his everyday life, so I surmised that if there was something he _didn’t_ talk about, there must have been a good reason behind it. I couldn’t say I wasn’t curious, but the Max sitting in front of me today seemed like a different person from the one I had talked to just one day before, and I had a hunch that the one from yesterday carried something in his heart that he wasn’t willing to share.

I wanted to cling to this Max instead, the one with his usual smile and sunny countenance and lively stories from the North. So I didn’t press on the topic.

“What _is_ calligraphy, really?” Max asked when our conversation had steered to my pointless placeholder hobby. “Isn’t it just writing?”

“It’s making art out of writing. I don’t really know the purpose of it myself. It’s like your piano, just something that’s apparently suitable for the king to do.” Max had told me several times how he didn’t particularly have any passion for the piano and was only made to play it for the art of music, and because it was an elegant talent for a king to have.

“And what do you write?”

“Writings from famous poems and sacred texts. It’s totally pointless, really, but surprisingly relaxing. I guess I like holding the brush after all. It’s also a nice way to get some exercise, really.”

Max frowned at me. “Wait - exercise? By holding a brush?”

“Yeah?”

“How heavy are your paint brushes if that counts as exercise??”

“They’re not particularly heavy,” I said, scratching my ear, “but it’s the length that makes it somewhat tricky. You need to find the correct balance…”

“ _How long are your brushes?_ ”

“We’re clearly not thinking of the same thing.” I stood up and positioned my hands as if I was holding an imaginary calligraphy brush. “About this tall. The strokes need to be very precise, so it’s not always easy to control the brush.”

Max stared at me with a gaping mouth.

“What were you thinking about, then?” I asked.

“Like…” Max raised his index fingers in front of his face and brought them some thirty inches from each other. “Maybe this long? That’s a pretty average brush.”

“Isn’t that just a pen?”

“Yeah, but brushes are for painting.”

“But…”

My next argument was interrupted when I suddenly sensed a presence appear in the vicinity of my room. It was Olivier, and he was walking towards Bixiúwu in rapid steps that spoke of urgency. Practising my elemental magic had also sharpened my sixth sense which, of course, was also part of my magic. It still required a lot of concentration, though, to be able to read auras properly.

“I just sensed Olivier on his way here,” I told Max. “It’s probably nothing too important at this hour, though.”

Max took all his belongings, the disc player and the snacks and hid behind the curtains covering my bed, like he always did when he needed to disappear. I took my time seating myself by the tea table and pretended to be filling a crossword puzzle of a magazine (an art and recreation one with nothing political on it, of course) that had been brought to me that morning.

I actually got a bit into filling in the puzzle for real while waiting for Olivier, so by the time he finally knocked on my door, I could genuinely show it to him.

“Good timing,” I said. “Do you know who this person in the hint is supposed to be?”

“No.” Olivier’s expression stayed completely deadpan. “Lady Mao wants to see Your Majesty. She’s waiting in the parlor.”

I let my hands holding the magazine drop down in disappointment. “Right now? Tell her that I’m busy.”

“With puzzles, Your Majesty?”

“Shouldn’t I? Does a king need to make excuses like this?”

“You know just as well as I do that unless you go see her in the parlor, she’ll just march right in anyway.”

Yes, I did know. Doors wouldn't hold Mao back.

“I’ll be there in a second,” I said and swallowed a sigh. I returned to the bedroom, tossed the crossword puzzle on the floor and poked my head through the curtains to tell Max I’d be back as soon as I could. I was surprised to see he was still in plain sight, lying on his stomach on the bed cover with his chin resting in his hands, instead of having turned invisible. He nodded his head but sported a rather sour expression, and that’s how I left him there.

I headed over to the outer palace across the paved path that connected the two buildings. _Please, don’t let it be about the wedding_ , I fervently thought to myself with every step.

Mao was standing in the middle of the parlor, staring at the mountain pattern painted on the walls, waiting for me. I genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, wished that the sight of her hadn’t stirred anxiety within me the way it did. It pained me to see her eyes light up with childlike excitement upon seeing me enter the room.

“Hey! I came to see how you’re doing.” She walked up to me with a smile, the sleeves of her pink dress flowing around her like a pair of wings. “Just over a week left of the ritual, huh? What have you been up to this week?”

“Two weeks, actually. It’s been more boring every passing day. I picked up calligraphy again to pass the time.”

“I bet! Olivier’s probably been busy lately - I heard there was some kind of riot in Tianjié. It was subdued quickly, though.”

“Really.” Tianjié was one of the largest cities in the capital mansion of Bì, not that far away from Tianguan. “Any news about the thing in Kuí?”

“Not yet. Rai-nii is working on it with some engineers.” Rai was the Duke of Kuí these days, so Mao had a real box seat to follow the tunnel incident. “You’re looking a lot healthier already,” she then continued, examining my face. “Looks like you’re getting used to the fasting.”

“Maybe?” Couldn’t very well say it was because I’d been eating in secret during daylight.

“I wish we could be doing something fun together already.” Mao linked her hands with mine and gave them a little swing. “They really should lay the stupid purification thing to rest already. Rai-nii promised he’d support demoliging the tradition if I ever got the chance to advocate it.”

“That’s encouraging to hear. I’d gladly give up on it.” And a few dozen other things. I did admire how boldly Mao uttered those words without caring whether anyone else was listening to us. “How is Rai, anyway? I hope I can spend some time with him soon too.”

“Eh, he’s the same as always, busy with work these days. He’s acting so high and mighty now that he’s the Duke, but deep down he’s the same awkward softie as always. Anyway, Rei-nii, I was thinking…” She wiggled her body like a caterpillar, still holding my hands, “once the purification is over, it’d be nice to celebrate it… Maybe we could throw a little party? Or maybe a bigger one. Actually,” she made a coy face at me, batting her long eyelashes, “I’ve been musing about it quite a bit already, and I thought it’d be fun to do a ball…”

“A ball?”

“A dance. I’ve wanted to host something like that in my manor for a while… What do you think?”

I had no idea what sort of face I should have been making at her. “It’s been ages since my last dance lesson, that’s for sure,” I said hesitantly; I was never really tailored for that sort of thing.

“Well, we have time to practise first!” With a faint blush, she added: “It’ll be useful for the wedding, too…”

Not wanting to spoil my good mood, I pretended not to have heard her addition. “I don’t know, Mao… I really mean it when I say I’m not a good dancer. But a celebration sounds nice - and doing it somewhere other than Tiger Maple.”

Mao beamed at me, squeezing my hands a bit harder. “I’ll see what I can do, then! I promise you don’t have to learn anything too complicated.”

I replied with a tiny smile, simultaneously glad and troubled to see her so happy over the idea. I didn’t really enjoy parties but was used to enduring them in silence. The idea of dancing didn’t _actually_ bother me that much, either; what bothered me was that there didn’t anymore exist the concept of me and Mao simply having fun together like we did in our shared childhood.

Mao's ball would, without a doubt, be a warm-up of sorts for the wedding reception.  _That_ was what I preemptively hated and had to force myself to feign happiness over.

Knowing that it was almost time for dinner, Mao gave me a brief embrace before she left. I made my way back to my quarters with heavy steps, trying hard to shed all the anxiety off my shoulders on the way. I’d have enough time to worry about it for the next couple of weeks and then some - or, preferably, grow out of the disturbing feeling of it and begin to look forward to getting to spend some time with the Chens and hopefully the others too outside Tiger Maple’s walls, for the first time in ages.

Once back in my room, I could faintly tell that Olivier had gone back to the outer palace and wouldn’t disturb us anymore, so I didn’t hesitate to pull the heavy curtains aside. What I discovered was a sleeping Max, curled to his side in the middle of the bed.

The sight first brought a grin to my face, but it was soon replaced by a new pang of concern. I crawled into the bed and tried Max’s forehead with the back of my hand. It felt warm… just like I anticipated. It had been a bit too convenient for him to supposedly be back to perfect health in just one day; he must have been exhausted all along and pretended to be fine, after all.

“You’re a big dummy,” I mumbled to myself before giving his shoulder a light nudge. And then a harder one. “Max. Wake up.”

It took a few more nudges to get him to open his eyes. When he did, he momentarily had that lost, dazed look of not recognising what was happening; then, his blue eyes grew wide and he sat up at once like an alarmed rabbit.

“Ah! I fell asleep?!” he yelled.

“Looks like it.”

“What time is it?”

“I was hardly gone for more than fifteen minutes. You really are still sick, aren’t you?”

“No! Or, I mean...  I have a medication, so it’s fine.”

I sighed and rubbed my temples. “It’s not fine. How are you supposed to get back home if you can’t even stay awake?”

“I can get home just fine if I restock my magic a little, like I always do.”

“You mean like last week?”

Max pouted at me and turned up his nose. “When did you become such a bully, Rei? I don’t like you anymore.”

Feeling a little better seeing him bicker so vigorously, I yielded with an apologetic smile. “You don’t? That’s too bad. Guess you don’t want to share the newest batch of Olivier’s macarons with me.” I savoured every bit of the expression Max made as I revealed the stack of macarons behind one of the cushions, like a glorious hidden treasure. The bed was so large, it was easy to hide just about anything in there. (Thankfully the servants in charge of cleaning the room never moved them away, either.)

So we ate some more, and chatted and bickered about pointless things like Western and Northern calligraphy some more, like we always did. And I enjoyed every second of it. When dinner-time was inevitably approaching, Max got up and took his star-patterned cloak, shoes and bag, carefully packing some of the macarons inside the latter. Then he was ready for another long-yet-short trip all the way back to Resting Palace.

“Promise me to rest well once you get home,” I lectured him as we stood by the veranda again, like we had so many times before.

“Yes, sir.”

“And I mean it when I say I don’t want to see you here again until you’re back in full health. I won’t let you in anymore. You’ll have to break a window to get in next time.”

“Hmph… I just might. See you later then, Rei.”

“See you. Take care.”

Soon any evidence of Max and Genbu's presence had vanished into thin air – or rather, water. Only the silent ripples on the pond's surface indicated that anyone at all had been there mere seconds before. How strange the world of magic and holy beasts really was. Even with a foot already in the door of that mysterious world, I found myself marveling at how such things could exist, and how it was possible for Max to supposedly shoot up that impassable mountain stream with a holy beast just about now. I had no view of the stream itself from this spot on the veranda, but I nevertheless stared up the rocky wall ahead as if expecting to see a figure or two climb it.

Returning to my room all alone afterwards was nothing short of depressing. Not only did the room feel twice as quiet and lonely, I hadn’t been able to shake off the loathsome feelings that remained lingering in my heart after the conversation with Mao.

I felt disgusted with myself. Max had momentarily eased the pain, but I wasn’t happy about him coming over despite being sick, either. Did I even deserve his company? Or Mao’s, to that matter? I hardly felt like I deserved that excited gleam in either of their eyes.

Knowing full well that I wouldn’t be able to eat anything, I told Olivier I would skip dinner that day and went straight to bed.


	28. Genbu-ou IX

Apart from having to stop once to rest for a moment, the journey back home went smoothly. After zooming along the waterways that connected the West and the North, I glided down the mellow Serpent River and peacefully arrived at the heart of Resting Palace. I always summoned and called Genbu back in a remote spot in the shade of the big spruces that lined the riverbank on both sides, then walked or ran the rest of the way home, finally crossing the Snow Glory Palace's lake from the backside. None of this would have been possible without my magic; but then again, this _was_ all my magic was good for.

Exhausted to the core, I lumbered the final stretch to the palace grounds. I had poured as much medicine into myself as was humanly reasonable and survived the entire trip with it, but I could feel my body reaching its limits now. With my thoughts scattered in several tiring directions, some of which were a slippery slope to depression when I thought back to Rei and Mao, I didn't believe my eyes for a second when I noticed Giancarlo's figure looming ahead. He was standing by the left-wing storage room door; his arms folded across his chest, he was tapping the stone step with his boot, impatient, throwing anxious glances left and right. He had never been standing in guard at the door like this upon my return before; like most people, he hated standing around out in the cold if he could avoid it.

I burst my magic bubble, actually relieved to let it go, and walked closer. “Hey, what’s up?”

Giancarlo, who'd been squinting in the opposite direction, jumped a little at my sudden appearance. He quickly regained his composure – or some of it, but he still looked pretty anxious. “Y-Your Highness! Finally, goddamn! This is gonna be the last of your tricks, for real. It's over. I'm not doing this anymore.”

“What?” He was talking so fast, I could hardly make out what he was babbling about.

Giancarlo cleared his throat and pounded his chest with a fist a couple times.

“It's over,” he repeated hoarsely. “What kind of idiocy drove you into sneaking out while you're still sick? Of course everyone noticed. What could I have said? Now Her Majesty is mad at _me_ for letting you out of my sight. Like – really – mad. Just... ugh, good luck, Your Highness.”

And after blurting this out, Giancarlo pressed his lips together tightly, stepped aside and gestured at the door. His expression was sour as if he’d just swallowed something disgusting.

For a moment, I stood frozen in place. My tired legs refused to move. A droplet of sweat dribbled down my spine under my thick cloak. I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it again, feeling like a fish running out of oxygen - or about to be baked in the oven with salt and pepper.

I hadn’t been gone for that long… had I? I'd told everyone, the doctor included, that I was feeling better already but wanted to sleep in peace and didn’t need to be tended to today. I thought that'd been a reasonable excuse to be left alone...

I finally climbed the steps to the door and entered the palace, my legs feeling clumsy like two pieces of wood. As expected, there was nobody in the dark storage room. My own steps alone echoed hollowly on the walls as I slowly made my way further inside, peeling the heavy layers of clothes off in the process. I had entered the house this way numerous times before, but today the storage room and the corridor beyond felt borderline menacing and my heart was pounding with nervous anticipation, with no idea of what I was supposed to prepare myself for.

Surely enough, there was Mama. She stood in the middle of the otherwise empty corridor and looked like a statue in her graceful dress of blue and purple. And when she turned to face me, her face could as well have been made of real stone; cold, stoic, hard and pale like the white walls surrounding us. Her complexion was that of a demoness, scorning ruthlessly down at the pathetic humans - or me, in this case - at her feet.

I wanted to have the first word, but found myself unable to speak in her brooding presence.

“Didn’t I just tell you yesterday?” Her voice could have frozen the entire ocean over. “Or are you too stupid to understand? I thought I raised a smart son.”

“I - I had a reason –”

She didn't grant me enough time to cough up an excuse. Mama walked up to me in a couple of brisk steps, raised a hand, and a second later a sharp pain burnt my left cheek and threw all my senses in a disarray. It took me a couple more seconds to register that she'd just slapped me for the first time in my life.

“I have never been this disappointed, Max. I didn't believe you to be this childish, but you have proven me wrong. I specifically told you to stop pulling stupid pranks like this. Giancarlo told me that this wasn't the first time. You think you're clever, sneaking around and not getting caught, don't you? You think it's acceptable for a noble just because the holy beast acknowledges your potential? Is this how a king is supposed to behave? You should know better. You may still be underage but you are also the Genbu-ou, and I sincerely thought that my own son would understand the significance of carrying the crown and not act like a rebellious brat. Did I overestimate you, Max? I don't want to believe it. I wanted to believe that you are a smart and trustworthy son.

“And you.” Her attention shifted – to Giancarlo who had quietly tailed me, as I now realised. “You have been neglecting your task as the royal knight. You haven't been acting in the best interest of your king. It is your duty and your honour to protect him under any circumstances and make sure that he doesn't do anything reckless or harmful. You have failed at carrying out your duty – but at least you were honest and acknowledged your own shortcomings in the end, and I am grateful for that, because my own son is apparently unable to do the same.”

She turned to me again. “I have decided to let Giancarlo keep his position for now, but I will look into the possibility of finding a replacement for him. Moreover, he is not allowed to let you go out on your own anymore, not until you come of age. From this day onwards until the day you turn eighteen, Giancarlo will be taking orders from me and your father alone, not you. Understood?”

I couldn't speak. I couldn't even feel my tongue, let alone find the courage to speak through my tears. During her lengthy speech, all I could do was hold my aching cheek, stare at the pearl-white snowflake patterns embroidered into the hem of her dress, and wish that the marble tiles under my feet would swallow me whole.

I had never seen Mama like this. She had never spoken to me like this. She had never called me stupid and worthless like this. It didn't feel real. It _couldn't_ be real. Was this really Mama? The same Mama who had been so understanding only one day earlier? Did I deserve this? Had I done something so bad that she would hate me for it? Everything was turning into a blur, blending together into a shapeless mess; the snowflakes and her ice-cold voice and the pain on my cheek.

“Understood, Your Majesty,” I heard Giancarlo say behind me. His voice sounded distant in my ringing ears, but he was probably standing right behind me.

When Mama began talking again, I flinched expecting another lash of painful words; but her tone wasn’t quite so aggressive anymore.

“I truly do not understand why you would do something like this, Max, getting yourself sick and not even letting yourself get better first before rushing out again. You should always put your own health and safety first. I'm sad to see I don't know you as well as I thought.” Now she took a step away from me. “Go back to your room and get some proper rest. You shouldn't leave your room until you're back in perfect health, for your own good – and others' as well. Giancarlo, if I find out that he's gone somewhere again before being in the condition to do so, I will take back my words about letting you keep your position.”

“Of course, Your Majesty. I swear to look after him from now on.”

“Max, I'm sure you understand that this is all for your own best. If not now, then eventually.” She turned her back to me and began walking away, her golden hair and the hem of her dress whirling as she went. And she bid me a good night like nothing had happened, then walked away with her heels clopping against the tiled floor, just like that.

I didn't need Giancarlo to take me to my room. I took off by myself and ran up the stairs, deliberately leaving the knight as far behind as possible, ignoring his distant calls behind me. I rushed through the palace corridors in a state of waning consciousness, not paying attention to anything on the way. My feet took me to my bedroom and I collapsed on the bed, fully dressed, and let my mind collapse along with my tired body. I floated into the numb, feverish world of neither wake nor sleep once more.

 

* * *

 

The events of that day later fused into one unpleasant memory. After lying in a restless, chaotic state for about an hour, I eventually fell into deep sleep. When I opened my eyes again, it took me longer than usual to regain my grasp of reality and be able to recall all that had happened; and when I did, fear and frustration burnt bitterly in my heart - and the hurt side of my face burnt rather literally.

It wasn't morning, but late to the noon already. I was wearing my nightgown instead of the clothes I had collapsed in bed with, so the servants must have changed them while I slept. I was batting the last bits of sleep out of my eyes when Giancarlo entered the room, wishing me a good morning despite it not being morning. He still looked pale and a bit disturbed, and I didn’t blame him; Mama must have given him a hard time, too.

He handed me a pack of ice and I quietly pressed it against my swollen face. Apart from the pain in my cheek, I mostly just felt numb.

“I’ve never seen Her Majesty like that, in all my years of knowing her,” Giancarlo said. “That sure was something. But don’t think too harshly of her. She’s just worried about you.”

I didn’t answer.

“ _Why_ did you have to go while you're still sick?” he then inquired and joined me on the bed, crossing his legs. While he sounded demanding, I could tell he wasn't exactly pissed off. Giancarlo had such a mellow personality that the only thing that I knew to really set him off was insulting royal knights or his Amphisbaena, the holy beast. Otherwise it was next to impossible to set him off; but I had almost gotten him fired, so he did have a reason to get angry with me if he wanted to. “None of this would have happened. I mean, seriously. You have the rest of your life to visit Tianguan whenever.”

I bit my lip. It really wasn’t something I wanted to discuss with Giancarlo - at least not right now. Or maybe never. Moreover, I couldn't understand it too well myself either; maybe Mama was right and I really was stupid.

“Yeah yeah, it was dumb,” I only said and lied back down, turning my back to Giancarlo and grabbing a pillow to squeeze with my free arm. “Now I probably can't go see him anymore. It's all my own fault.”

“I shouldn't have allowed you to use your magic for things like that in the first place.” I heard the self-deprecating grimace in Giancarlo's voice. “It's my fault, too.”

“Well, now you'll get to babysit me for a while, so enjoy.”

“You’re saying that as a joke but, no offense, you really have been behaving like a rebellious kid. Breaking into a royal palace is no joke, it's illegal. Maybe you should use this opportunity to reflect on that yourself.”

“You’re starting to sound like Ralf and Olivier. Oh, that reminds me, I brought you Olivier’s macarons again.” I waved my hand lazily in my bag’s direction. It had been placed on one of the chairs, presumably also by the servants.

Giancarlo seemed a bit hesitant at first, but went for the pastries anyway. I knew he couldn't resist them.

“You’re keeping Olivier in the dark about this whole thing, right?” he then asked.

“That’s Rei’s business, but I think so. Olivier would never allow it. He seems to think Rei is allergic to anything fun or something.”

I expected Giancarlo to say something more about it, but he didn’t. He only stared at a handful of pink and green macarons for a moment, then got up again and shoved them in a pocket.

“You must be hungry, Your Highness. I’ll go tell someone to bring you lunch.”

“Thanks.” I stared after Giancarlo’s disappearing back, a bit puzzled by the sudden change in his demeanor. Was it because I had mentioned Olivier? Did my remark about him actually offend Giancarlo?

It was nice to be left alone for a moment, though, so I could sulk and feel sorry for myself in peace. My days of being free to roam around town alone were really over now. Moreover, I’d have to tell Rei about this, and being aware of how I had let him down was possibly even worse than losing a part of my freedom.

When I pulled my knees against my chest and was about to press the ice pack against my cheek again, I suddenly noticed that something was missing. I brought a hand to my bare neck. A weight so familiar that I never even thought about it was suddenly gone - the pendant of Genbu that I always wore, even in my sleep. It was gone…

My first thought was that the servants had taken it off while dressing me… but they knew not to and never had, including when I’d been carried to bed sick on Sunday.

An ice-cold wave of mortification washed over me and made my hair stand on end. _Mama has taken the pendant away from me._ Whether she knew that I’d been using Genbu to move around or not, this must have been one form of her punishment.


	29. Seiryuu-ou X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a reminder that the "fencing" in this story isn't the actual sport but my own imaginary mix of fencing and japanese kendo. generally, the rules are from fencing and the equipment from kendo.

The promise of getting to spar with Kai had sparked new-found motivation in me, which fuelled me to pick up fencing practice with Ralf again. It was actually, in some ways at least, nice to be back to the fencing hall I’d been so deadly bored of before. Finally, all my training had some real purpose; even Ralf seemed to be taking it more seriously now, knowing that he was training me for a showdown with Kai, whom he surely considered a formidable enemy from the South.

Gramps, whose ideas were always this bizarre and dramatic, apparently thought it would be a better show for the audience if Kai and I didn’t face each other on the battlefield until the garden festival; so instead of letting us practise together, we did it separately, me with Ralf and Kai with Gramps. Well, I didn’t really mind, because I was sure Gramps would allow me to start actual sword fighting if I proved myself and my skill with a fencing sword here. I took it as a final test of sorts, a chance to show I was ready.

Besides, Kai must have been good if Gramps himself approved of him; and the more I thought about it, the more pumped I got about the upcoming match. Moreover, it was exciting to know that fencing was also done in the South and not just the East. I now knew something that Professor didn’t!

The day of the garden festival was warm and sunny, almost too warm for swinging a sword around. I had never before seen the castle grounds so packed with people – I mean, the event did attract a crowd every year regardless, but it was really, _really_ packed this time around. The park side of the garden looked like an anthill from my bedroom window, it was a chaos of people roaming around, looking at the garden, snatching pictures with their cameras, or trying to find a good spot to settle down at; and castle staff running back and forth bringing more benches and more tables and more cushions everywhere. It looked like everyone and their moms wanted to see the mysterious Suzaku-ou. I observed the organised chaos from the safety of the castle until it was my time to make an appearance.

When I entered the garden, it was easy to tell tourists apart from locals: when the former spotted me, they began gasping and ‘ooh’ing and ‘aah’ing rather foolishly and started bowing their heads or dropping on their knees to salute me, which was something I hardly tolerated from anyone; the latter greeted me like an old friend whom they passed by on the street.

I’d spent so much time inside the castle lately that I’d almost forgotten how fun it was to be surrounded by so many people. It looked like the entirety of Tsuno (and then some) had shoved themselves through the Cherrywood gates that day.

When Kai entered the garden, accompanied by Mihael and Gramps as if they were a weird disproportionate pair of bodyguards, the crowd’s reaction was completely different. Locals and tourists alike fell into nervous or eager silence, and everyone who had been obsessively documenting every aspect of the garden with their cameras suddenly dropped their devices and turned to look at him. Many bowed their heads – but they all seemed a bit unsure of the gesture. (Fair enough, Southerners shook hands rather than bowed at each other.)

Kai acted as if none of it had any effect on him, as usual; almost as if it didn’t even concern him whatsoever. Mihael accompanied him to the table I’d been sitting at under a fancy little umbrella while Gramps remained to give his usual welcoming speech to the guests. Even if Kai didn’t show it, I was pretty sure by now that he was more or less intimidated by crowds and these sorts of new situations – I could sense it from him now as well – which caused him to withdraw into his shell and act aloof. He was back to wearing his black uniform and formal cape, and I was about to point out how he must have been smouldering under them in the warmth weather, but I knew it'd be hard to get him to answer my questions in that state – and besides, he must have been used to heat in his home country if he walked around wearing that uniform on a daily basis.

At one point Professor, who was also present with his parents, came to talk to me by our table; and he tried greeting Kai as well, saying how he’d heard a lot about him from me. Kai only granted him a questioning glare that was enough to make Professor shake in his boots and hurriedly wobble away with an apology. Poor Professor; he wasn’t the most headstrong guy out there, but at least he tried.

I sat there listening to Gramps talk and the live orchestra (they had their own little shelter in the garden for these occasions) play a piece after piece after piece with gradually growing impatience. Eventually I’d had enough of waiting and wanted to leave the table to go get ready. Ralf helped me change into full fencing gear: helmet, arm, leg and chest protection, gloves, shoes – I rarely put on every single piece of the equipment for practice, which was more about the self-discipline part of things rather than beating the shit out of each other with swords; we also used wooden practice swords most of the time, but for this performance match I’d get to use a real bamboo sword. I’d been practising with one against Ralf in the past week, of course, to get used to it.

Gramps had gotten what he wanted, of course, so there now stood a wooden platform in the middle of the garden built specifically for our match. It rose about three feet above the ground, and a whole array of seats had been brought in front of it in the shape of a half circle, giving me the impression of some kind of impromptu open-air theatre. By the time we returned to the garden in our full fencing gear, all the seats were already taken and Kai and I took our positions at both ends of the long platform.

The formal fencing duel etiquette included a greeting of the parties by first walking to the centre of the arena, facing each other while holding the helmets under our arms, and simultaneously bowing at each other. Then we retreated back to the areas marked at each end of the platform, put the helmets on and grabbed our swords, got into starting position, and were ready to begin.

The helmet’s protective mask hid the audience from my field of vision, and when I didn’t see it, I didn’t even think of it; to me, as soon as I placed the helmet in my head, the crowd before the platform had disappeared. I focused my entire being on the sword in my hands and the figure of Kai before me, my body charged with pent-up energy waiting to be unleashed. I wasn’t nervous nor anxious; filled with nothing but excitement, even before lifting my sword for the first time, I was enjoying myself more than I had in a long time.

Gramps, who stood in the crescent moon-shaped space between the platform and the audience, acting as a referee, had raised his hand towards the sky. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him; he swung the hand down, cut the air with the side of the hand, and shouted. “Fence! Begin!”

And so I raised the tip of my sword off the wooden platform. My motto in combat was to go fast and hard, steal the first point early, strike while the iron is hot and gain a psychological advantage over the opponent. With determination burning every inch of my body, I charged forward, eager to go for a fast lunge, maybe steal a strike on Kai’s left shoulder...

But Kai also charged towards me. And he was at least as fast as I had launched myself – no, he was probably even faster. Completely caught by surprise, I stalled myself so I wouldn’t crash right into him and instantly felt the strike on my chest – and for once didn’t belittle the importance of the chest plate at all – as Kai’s hit knocked me off balance; I nearly fell right off the edge of the platform. I could hear the audience make noise, though not very clearly but as if they were somewhere very far away, shouting, cheering, gasping. The rush of my own blood in my ears was much louder.

In fencing, the fencers return to their designated spots on the arena after each hit before continuing the match. A fencing match comprises three rounds, and the player who first lands fifteen hits on the opponent wins a round; fifteen hits may sound like a lot, but the majority take place within a matter of seconds, especially on the first round. The player with two won rounds is the victor of the match.

The length of a match could be anything from fifteen minutes to hours, depending on the fencers and their strategies. There had been some famous Eastern fencers who stalled matches on purpose to tire their opponents out, but they were rare, as such a strategy required immense talent and patience.

Kai’s strategy, on the other hand: became apparent to me within the next two minutes: his style was to try and destroy his opponent with brute force as fast as possible. Before I had even gathered my thoughts properly, he had gotten a bunch of brutally hard strikes on me and repeatedly knocked me off balance. Despite all the protective armour, I could feel a dozen bruises brewing under my skin already.

_He’s good. Like,_ really _good._

How weird. Although I was fully aware that Kai was treating me as his punching back right now, and his strikes packed enough punch to blow the air out of me, I wasn’t scared or discouraged. In fact, the better I realised just how strong Kai was, the faster the adrenaline rushed through my veins and the more steamed up I felt – the more excited I got, and I couldn’t stop smiling behind my mask. Kai was amazing... He could not only _do_ fencing, but he was this _good_ at it. He was incredible!

After I had let Kai catch me by surprise half a dozen times, my thoughts finally fell into place and I began to successfully parry against his lunges and strikes; I found my own pace and rhythm in this match. And when Kai realised that his hits no longer landed so easily – perhaps he lost his cool for a bit, because his mad charges began slowing down. It was obvious that he was starting to _think_ more, realising that he wouldn’t actually beat me just by randomly smacking the shit out of me.

And once he stopped to reconsider his strategy, even if it as just for a second or two, I lunged at him. It was a guaranteed hit – I was too close to him already, fuelled by the promise of my first point, moving too fast for him to parry or dodge anymore – my sword was almost touching his side already –

But it didn’t touch him. Suddenly, he was gone from where he was. I stumbled, reeled and fell on my knees, momentarily confused of my own course, not understanding what had happened. I heard the audience gasp loudly, so loudly that I couldn’t not notice it. I lifted my chin and saw Kai standing a few feet away, at his own end of the platform again.

“Wha...?” I mouthed in shock. What had just happened? Did he teleport or what? No, it was more like... he _jumped_ out of my way and ended up all the way out there...

“Time-out!” bellowed Gramps, raising his hand. “Using magic is prohibited! Player Suzaku-ou will receive a five point penalty!”

_Magic?_ And my brain caught up with what had happened once I heard the word – Kai had used his magic – to _fly_ out of the way of my sword. It had happened so fast that my mind hardly followed, but he definitely had sprung out of the way and retreated – _zoomed_ across the air just now.

Even Kai himself appeared a bit dumbfounded by this. He had pointed his sword down and peered down at it in surprised silence. Perhaps he had used his magic to move away by reflex and not on purpose.

But the penalty meant that he’d lost all the points he’d just gained from hammering me, and now the match could _really_ begin.

 

* * *

 

In the end, the match lasted for about forty-five minutes – pretty average for two fairly seasoned fencers with no interest in war of endurance. I only heard this afterwards from others, though, because I had lost all and any sense of time during the match. I had been completely engrossed, utterly absorbed, so drawn into finding new, better patterns to dodge, parry, to find a place to strike.

Earlier, before I had begun losing my taste for it out of boredom, I had enjoyed fencing decently much. But this was the first time I was completely engrossed in holding a sword in my hands. I was having the time of my life that afternoon. Kai must have been even stronger than my Gramps – or perhaps it wasn’t right to compare the two, as their ways of fighting were like night and day; Kai was much more aggressive, and while I spent a good chuck of the match just enduring his powerful strikes, I had always been a fast learner with this stuff. I could sense that Kai wasn’t used to a match lasting for even this long; his style was to destroy his opponent as quickly and effortlessly as possible, and perhaps the fact that I had resisted him for so long had thrown him off balance. I had gained an upper hand in this battle.

Although my training had conditioned me to automatically keep count of points, this time I didn’t pay them any attention whatsoever. I was so immersed, it seemed to come out of nowhere when Gramps suddenly bellowed “Halt!” from below us. The audience immediately burst into wild cheering. It took me a few more seconds to realise that I had just reached another fifteenth hit and won the match; there was no need to get back in position at my own end of the platform anymore.

I dropped the sword and took my helmet off, panting, then smiling at the zipped-up crowd that was going bonkers over their king’s victory. I pumped my fist at the air and shouted, and the crowd shouted with me; I had won in front of my own people, and it felt _amazing_.

I turned to look at Kai. He had also taken his helmet off, his hair and face alike drenched in sweat – the red triangles on his cheeks intact, so I deduced they really were part of his face and not painted on, as they would otherwise have been smudged all over his face for sure – and his eyes cast down. He did look disappointed; anyone would have, I bet, and it was actually refreshing to see that Kai wasn’t an exception. It was a very human reaction from him.

But, whether Kai noticed it or not, I could hear some people in the audience also yelling encouragements to him. These people, even if inclined to support me instead, didn’t hate him – and surely they were all impressed by his skill too. I walked over to Kai and reached out my hand.

“Good game!” I told him with a smile. “That was the best fencing match of my entire life. And I really mean it. Thanks, Kai!”

This time he took my hand fairly quickly, and actually shook it too. He did let go quickly as well, but it was definitely an improvement from before.

Pride and happiness swelling inside my chest like a balloon, I turned again to wave at the audience and allowed myself to bask in their applause. I could see the reporters of various media outlets push their way towards the platform through the crowd and mentally prepared myself for their interviews, already thinking of witty answers for their questions...

But I never got to give that interview.

Something weird happened. It started as nothing but a refreshing little breeze that drifted across the garden, gently rustling the trees and people’s clothes; the cool air felt really good against my hot skin, so I closed my eyes to enjoy it.

In a matter of seconds, the light wind grew into a gust; then, the gust suddenly grew into a strong breeze; then, a near gale. The pleasant puff of air on my face turned into a prickly cold, full-blown blast that threw me off balance.

The next moment, people’s surprised, alarmed screams blended into the howling of the wind that had filled my ears. I lifted a hand to shield my face and jumped off the wooden platform before the wind could push me off the edge; I crouched against the platform for shelter, my hair stubbornly fluttering into my face and making it hard to see.

In the minimal safety of the platform, I could lift my head just enough to see that the garden had been obscured from view by the chaotic dance of leaves and flower petals that flung across the air, thick like a colourful blizzard. It was insanity; I couldn’t hear anything but muffled screaming and clatter and the savage roar of the cold wind whose relentless assault was making my ears go numb. Things were flying around the garden, tumbling along the grass, hitting everything on their way.

_This has to stop, right now_ , I thought and brought my hands to my ears, both of which were freezing by now.

_Stop it_. _I want it to stop._

The marquees set up around the garden were now falling over; I could hear the racket caused by their abrupt fall.

_Just fucking stop it already!_

And before I could even think about it, the word escaped my mouth in a demanding yell, directed at nothing and nobody, yet very much at _something_ out there:

“Seiryuu!”

And it stopped.

The gale died down almost instantaneously. It took the scattered petals, leaves and other rubble it had been carrying along a few more feet further, before all the flying particles fell to the ground at once; it all froze in place, as if time itself had stopped.

The entire storm had hardly lasted for longer than two minutes.

The garden was in total disarray. Most people in the audience had remained in their seats, crouched or curled up to protect themselves and each other, so the chairs all remained in their half-circle shape in place; but all other props had been violently tossed away or broken or had just plain disappeared somewhere with the wind. The platform was sturdy enough and hadn’t moved, as were the lampposts and other permanent structures around the garden, but the most obvious victims were the plants and trees. Their flowers were all but gone, their colourful petals, especially the blue cherry blossoms, scattered all over the garden grounds or people’s hair and clothes, which they were now furiously shaking free of the rubble. Some of the smaller trees had fallen over or snapped in half.

It was devastation, really, but at least I didn't see any serious harm done to the people; everyone looked shocked, perhaps a little bruised, but nothing major.

As I began picking petals and other tiny particles of random things off my hair, I suddenly realised that Kai was right beside me. I hadn’t even noticed him there, that he had taken shelter next to the platform like me. Now he was staring at me with a weird look in his purple eyes, apparently not caring about a branch that was sticking out of his hair.

“I have _no_ idea what that was,” I said to him, considering removing the branch myself if he didn’t.

“Did you just call the name of your holy beast?” Kai asked.

I stared back at him. His question caught me off-guard for several reasons, the first and foremost being that I was pretty sure it was the first time Kai had asked me anything. Secondly, because I had hardly realised what I’d done, so I could have asked the same question myself.

“I... I think so?” I answered, uncertain.

I didn’t have much time to dwell on the thought myself because Ralf and Mihael rushed over to us the next moment. Ralf was so genuinely worried about me that it was borderline creepy. It didn’t suit him. But what did suit him was dramatically beating himself up for not having been by my side – the knights had been following our match from afar. It was no use to tell him that the wind hadn’t done anything to me whatsoever. Knights are so stupid. I was more concerned with people's safety, so I sent Ralf away to confirm that nobody had been seriously injured.

The festival was obviously prematurely ended, and we were then taken inside the castle. The gardening staff began saving what they could in the garden. Even without a particular fondness for the garden I felt bad for its sorry state, the ravaged flower bushes and cherry trees and all the mess that had thrown the place into disarray. So long for the brilliance of Sowmoon.

 

* * *

 

Some time later, I was safely soaking in the comforting warmth of the baths. It felt heavenly to wash away the sweat and grime of the day and to allow myself to relax after the shocking afternoon. So much had happened in rapid succession, there was a lot to digest; but even among all that disorder, what my thoughts repeatedly and inevitably wandered back to was Seiryuu.

I did call Seiryuu’s name, didn’t I? Kai had heard it, so it must have been so. I had been so shocked and my senses so blurred by the storm, it was hard to tell. But the wind had stopped immediately after... Was it just coincidence? Or was it not?

But if it wasn’t, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what had actually happened and _how_  that had made it stop. That gust of wind itself didn’t make any sense; the storm season had supposedly ended several weeks ago already, and I was pretty sure I had never heard of a random, short relapse like this before. I’d need to ask Gramps about it later...

When I afterwards returned to the living quarters, I found Kai standing in the middle of the entrance hall. He was also wearing the afterbath robes, meaning he’d left the bathhouse a little before me. He was standing there alone peering up at the row of family portraits – my family’s portraits – on the entrance hall wall. I’d seen him looking at them once before as well; Kai seemed weirdly mesmerised by that bunch of old pictures, all of which were black-and-white paintings of the members of my family.

“Hey,” I called out to him, winning his attention over the portraits. “Wanna have a soda with me on the porch? Or something else?”

Kai replied with a “hmph” but didn’t object. Having a drink after bath was a habit of mine he hadn’t joined before, but now he did, to my surprise. So a moment later we sat on the porch together and I sipped happily from my bottle, the carbonated drink popping like a hundred miniscule fireworks in my mouth.

“I had so much fun today,” I said. “It was so great, seriously! I mean the match, obviously. Haven’t had one that good in ages.”

Kai didn’t reply. He hadn’t wanted anything to drink, so he only sat there keeping me his usual reserved company.

“So,” I then began, clearing my throat a little as the telltale gesture of wishing to start an actual conversation, “you can use your magic to fly?”

“Yeah,” Kai said. “Just short distances, though.”

“Oh, really? But it’s still cool as hell. Can you do other things too?”

Kai didn’t answer at first, and for a moment I thought he didn’t even intend to, that maybe he was done with cooperating with me for the day. Then, without a word, he lifted his right hand, pointing his index finger to the ceiling. A second later a tiny flame appeared at the tip of his finger – as if his finger was a lighter, that small device people sometimes used in place of matches. Kai then blew it like a candle and the flame disappeared, leaving a faint, serpent-like puff of smoke behind.

“Wow,” was all I could say. Fire magic, huh. Magic really did come in all shapes and elements, didn’t it? I hadn’t even considered the possibilities it posed, not really having heard of anything but Max’s magic so far – but it made sense for Kai to light fires, since he came from the blazing country of Sun and volcanoes, which also matched that eruptive strength of his I’d witnessed in the fencing match. And I had sensed a fiery temper under Kai’s aloof shell, too, even if he played it cool at most times. The more I thought about it, the better it suited him.

“What do you actually _use_ that for, though?” I then asked. “Isn’t it inconvenient? You could accidentally set stuff on fire.”

“It’s a useful light source,” Kai only said.

“Well, I guess.” I couldn’t really imagine the situation where that was useful, but if he said so. I took another sip from my bottle, quietly thinking to myself that I wasn’t too fond of fire myself, given that I lived in a city where everything was built out of wood. Gramps had taught me to be wary of fire.

“And you say you don’t know any magic?” Kai then suddenly asked and turned to me.

Surprised, I nearly spat my drink out. That was already the second question Kai had asked me and the second time he spoke to me of his own accord on the same day. Moreover, I hadn’t expected him to remember I’d once said I didn’t know magic.

“True, I don’t,” I replied, wiping my chin. “I wasn’t ever told I was supposed to know any in the first place.” Then I looked thoughtfully at the bottle in my hand. “Max has water magic, and you have fire – Rei has electricity, I think – so I wonder what my element would be if I knew any.”

“Could be wind,” Kai stated nonchalantly, as if it was something totally obvious. “Since you stopped the storm today.”

I barked a humourless laugh. “Oh, please,” I began, “that wasn’t...”

But my own words trailed off, as I wasn’t sure how to even respond. Could I say for sure it hadn’t been me? But it hadn’t _felt_ like using magic to me. On the other hand, what did I know about magic or how it was supposed to feel like? But I was absolutely, one hundred percent sure that I had never known any magic in my life.

At a loss for words and somewhat uncomfortable with the topic, I decided to steer it elsewhere. I planted the soda bottle on the table next to my seat and placed my hands on my crossed legs.

“Kai,” I said, “could you tell me what you honestly think of this whole thing? I mean, of you coming here and all.” He’d been talking to me so much already that day, I was hoping this could be an opening for the conversation I’d been waiting to have with him.

Well, turned out it really wasn’t. He said in his usual snarl: “I think you’re an idiot for doing the exact opposite of what I told you to. But this place is alright,” he then quickly added.

His insult made my cheeks go a bit warm.

“That so? But I can’t be that much of an idiot if I did the right thing, huh? It’s not like I’m interested in being in cahoots with your grandpa, but I just wanted you out of that place.” Although I didn’t really know what _that place_ was, since Kai hadn’t told me any details about Sand Lily; but knowing that he was under strict control at home was enough.

Kai stood up and turned his back to me, about to leave the porch.

Before he did, though, he repeated in a weirdly soft tone of voice: “You really are an idiot.”


	30. Byakko-ou X

“Ugh, does he _have_ to call me an idiot after all this? He could at least explain what’s so stupid about it!” The fuming hologram image of Takao crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.

“Maybe he meant you thinking you’re not doing as his grandfather wants while doing exactly so,” I suggested.

“But it’s not like anything _bad_ has come out of it! I can tell he had fun yesterday, too. I really think he’s warming up to being here.”

“That would be nice.”

“Augh, I wanna discuss his magic with Max so bad. Do you know when he’s coming back?”

“No,” I said and cast my eyes down to my white sleeves, “I have no idea.”

After fully recovering from his sickness, Max had left to visit that baron he had some unfinished business with (to make up for an arrangement that had been cancelled due to Max’s condition, apparently). Max said he wasn’t sure when he’d be back but that it shouldn’t take more than a couple of days; now he’d been gone for several already. Perhaps his mother wanted to keep him occupied and hence out of trouble and to cool his head a little – and maybe Max wanted it himself, too.

It had been disheartening to hear that Max could no longer come visit me, but seeing how upset _he_ was about it made me want to console him and not show how much it bothered me – it didn’t mean we’d never see each other again, after all. Ultimately I had known from the beginning that it wouldn’t pass for very long; it’s far from normal for a king to sneak out to another royal palace on regular basis. I understood his mother’s anger to an extent, but actually bruising Max’s face, especially when he had still been recovering from being sick, was only cruel.

Of course the situation was upsetting to me as well, though; and the more time passed, the better I realised just how much so. I’d come to rely on those moments of being with him, like rare glimpses of genuine Sunshine on my otherwise grey, monotonous days. And now that I hadn’t talked to Max through the talkpad in a while either, a sense of depression was beginning to seep its way back to my life. Without Max around to keep things bright and interesting, the last two weeks of my purification period felt about as long as the first two moons together.

Takao’s call was a rare delight in the midst of it. He wasn’t as accustomed to using the device as Max and I were, but he did call me occasionally. Usually it was to complain about Kai.

“I hope he’s back soon,” Takao said. “I’ll tell you both everything then. Oh, anything new about that thing about the hole in the ground? Even our news had something about it – my friend Professor is crazy about stuff like that. People have been coming up with some pretty awesome conspiracy theories about it. I’d rather know the actual truth, though.”

“Well, yes and no...”

The newest turn of events, if it could be called one, was that the investigation had been cancelled altogether. The officials that led and funded the expedition had dropped it, appealing to “lack of sufficient results” or something of the sort. It was an anticlimactic conclusion, to say the least, for the saga that had been going on for nearly two moons now; and everyone’s interest in the West (but apparently not in the East) had already shifted to a corruption scandal regarding a well-known insurance company, and it was as if everyone had collectively forgotten all about the tunnel incident.

As expected, the news came as a disappointment to Takao. “What? Seriously? And it was just getting good! You can’t leave me hanging like this! Can’t you, like, order them to keep going?”

“Probably not. I’m not the one who goes around giving orders here. I’ll ask about it from Rai when I get the chance – he’s Mao’s brother, the Duke of Kuí.”

“Well, I seriously hope you can get something out of him, ‘cause I refuse to actually believe in the conspiracy theory nonsense. I’ll show you stuff about it some other time – it’s getting late, I’d better go see if I could pester Kai for a bit before sleep. Catch you later, Rei!”

I bid him a good-bye, tossed the talkpad aside and rolled over in bed, amused by the thought of Takao getting on poor Kai's nerves on purpose.

The Suzaku-ou sure was an intriguing character. Ever since the day the four of us met each other in the Snow Glory Palace, I had harboured a potentially naïve feeling of kinship with Kai - or rather, my idea of him, as I couldn’t exactly say that I knew him at all. When I listened to Takao’s tales of Kai’s cautious and antisocial behaviour, I instinctively compared his situation to my own and could well imagine myself in his shoes if I had been under even stricter control by the Elders; they did control me but indirectly so, rarely actually making an appearance in my life. I was lucky to have had a soft landing in learning more about the outside world thanks to Max (and, though he was unaware of it, Kinomiya Ryuunosuke with his book). Max’s original purpose had probably been to do the same favour to Kai, but he hadn't responded to receiving the talkpad in the same way (and then Kai’s talkpad had been seized by his grandfather, anyway, potentially thanks to Takao). I had no doubts that Max could have gotten through Kai’s hard shell, and although Takao was breaking through it in his own silly way, little by little, he wasn’t as good at reading people as Max (not even close). The fact that he saw it as “pestering” Kai was fairly telltale.

I rolled over again to prop my chin against my hands and stared off into the looming night outside, through the oval-shaped window next to my bed that, with its curtain cast aside, was a giant black orb that displayed nothing but the darkness of the courtyard. The Sun hadn't finished setting yet, but the walls around the palace cast this side of Bixiùwu in impenetrable darkness.

_I wonder how Max is doing..._ Hopefully the baron wasn’t putting him through too much trouble; Max had had enough of that in a short span of time. I did feel guilty over it as well. I really should just have listened to reason from the start and told him to not sneak out for my sake, at least not as often. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later, with him gone for several hours every other day like that.

I had no idea how he’d even managed that for as long as he did; it was a perfect display of that certain dash of stubborn insanity in Max. Perhaps there was some in all us kings, really.

I jumped when three firm, heavy knocks boomed across the silence of the manor. How had I managed to let my focus loosen so bad again that I hadn’t noticed someone approaching my door? Now, of course, I could immediately tell it was Mao; she'd remembered to knock instead of just barging in to my place for once.

I sprang up from the bed to go open the door for her, hoping she wouldn’t notice that the start had made me zap a tiny part of my hair by accident.

Ten seconds later Mao had settled by my tea table, without waiting for me to invite her in; I wouldn’t have sent her away, of course, but could have used a moment’s warning to at least hide away the talkpad and some of the library things that littered my room here and there. But she didn’t pay any attention to the junk lying around the room, only the bagful of pastries that she had begun to pile on the table. I joined her on the other side, kneeling down opposite her.

“I brought you pancakes,” Mao said firmly. The bag of pancakes was soon followed by two cans of green iced tea. “How does it feel, Rei-nii, having only one week of the purification left?”

“Thank you. I don’t feel any purer than I did before, that much I can say,” I replied and took one of the cans (this label of iced tea wasn’t half bad). “I’m about ready to throw a party for this crap almost being over.”

“Speaking of parties...” Mao reached down to her purse anew and took out a book of some kind, a thick one with probably several hundred pages. I didn't recognise it but was a bit impressed that something so bulky even fit in her tiny purse. “Do you want to look up fabrics with me? This shop was recommended to me as having the best selection of wedding attire in the whole country!”

I almost spat out the canned tea that had just entered my mouth a second earlier. So it was a wedding fabrics catalogue. With some trouble, I swallowed both the tea and a discouraged sigh that was about to escape me.

“You’re asking someone who’s been wearing plain white for two moons,” I pointed out in a vain attempt to escape her reaching the catalogue my way.

“All the more, it’s about time for you to think of nicer things to wear! Don't you think it's fun?”

It was not. I _was_ looking forward to many things once the purification was over, but new clothes had not been in my mind even once. I couldn’t have cared less for the fabrics, nor did I want to imagine myself wearing any wedding attire. I didn’t even want to think about the wedding to begin with.

“This kind of thing isn’t really a men’s hobby, you know,” I told her and forced a smile while screaming internally.

She scoffed and glared at me with the amber golden eyes so similar to my own. “Nonsense – what century are you living in? There’s no such thing as men’s and women’s hobbies. Plenty of guys are into pretty clothes, too.”

Well, it wasn’t like I didn’t enjoy the sight of beautiful things, but faking interest in wedding fabrics was just too much of a stretch for me. Mao began flipping through the catalogue, each page presenting one type of fabric. The pages were laid out to present a small sample of each fabric and next to it a photo of a model wearing a piece of clothing made of the fabric in question. In any other context, they could have looked plenty beautiful.

“Do you prefer the traditional colours?” she asked, obviously heftily invested in the topic herself. “Or to be a bit more liberal? I like the idea of being creative with the attire, personally. I’d love to have a nature-themed wedding, so I’d want the fabrics to represent that too. Like, I don’t know, flowers or birds, or maybe a leaf pattern… Ah, but these waves in this one look really nice, don’t they? Water motifs are so nice and refreshing.”

Instead of looking at the catalogue, I looked at Mao as she spoke. I hated myself for being so uninterested in something that was so important to her - and my inability to properly tell her how I felt, not only about this particular activity but about our engagement. None of it was her fault, but it was this sincerity of hers that made it so difficult to really talk to her about it. I _had_ told her, many times, how I wasn’t ready for it; but her interpretation of my response had apparently been to make it a project of producing her ideal spouse out of me and making things as “fun and enjoyable” to me as possible (she had used these words herself).

My abhorrence with the whole concept of being forced to marry someone who was like a little sister to me ran much deeper than it not simply being “enjoyable enough”. I didn’t want to think of wedding attire. I didn’t even want a wedding. I loved Mao as a member of the family I was raised in, but I didn’t want to marry her; and didn’t want to pretend that I wanted to. I would rather have died than lived denying my real self so thoroughly and, perhaps even more importantly, made her life a lie as well. Mao didn’t deserve it, nor did she deserve me sitting here pretending that I was interested in the wedding and that this all would have a happy, jolly end.

A long ago, I had made the mistake of telling Mao that I would try to learn to love her as more than a sister – that, although this was the current quality of my feelings for her, it might one day change. And she had believed me, and had been expecting that change ever since; even now, she still believed in it. I did not.

I wished I could go back in time and stop myself from ever making such promises. The more time passed, the clearer it had become that it was not meant to happen. To the contrary of what the rest of this country seemed to think, I was no saint; as much as I cared for Mao and didn’t wish to hurt her feelings, there was enough selfishness in me to not be willing to sacrifice my own happiness to this extent. Mao’s romantic advances made me nothing but uncomfortable, but no matter how many times I rejected her, she never stopped believing in me to come around in the end, and that was perhaps the worst part of it all. It made me hate myself so much for not being able to fall in love with her.

Mao stopped talking and raised her eyes to me, noticing that I was absent-mindedly staring at her, and probably not with the most flattering of expressions.

“I guess you don’t like this either,” she then said and suddenly slammed the catalogue shut. “Hard to please as always, you are, Rei-nii.”

She was always blunt and straightforward like this, but the gesture filled me with apologetic shame regardless.

“No, I…” I swallowed and let my gaze sink to the table; in the end there was no point in lying about it. “I’m sorry…”

“Hey, it’s okay. We can come back to this later.” Mao leaned over the table and, to my horror, softly caressed my left cheek. “You’re looking a bit pale. Are you all right?”

“I’m - just tired.” I caught her hand in mine, meaning to stop it from going for my hair so she wouldn’t notice the burnt part; then immediately regretted it, realising that she would probably take the gesture wrong. I dragged her hand down, let go of it and sighed. “I was actually just getting ready for bed before you got here.”

“Already? It’s not that late yet.”

“Olivier makes me wake up early.”

“Oh, that’s so like Mister Snobbypants. Sorry, I shouldn’t call him that – I meant _Sir_ Snobbypants.”

I was relieved – then immediately felt guilty for it – when Mao pulled away and stood up. Then she pointed at the pancakes on the table.

“Have some of these before going to bed though, okay? Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good.” Mao took her pink, tassel-embroidered purse and made her way towards the screen by the bedroom door when she suddenly added: “Oh, by the way, I got a permission to hold the ball in Tiangao. I think Summermoon would be a lovely time for a little party. Didn’t you just say you wanted a party? Yeah yeah, okay, I’ll really go now. See you, Rei-nii!”

“See you, Mao…”

I couldn’t say I’d have paid a single thought to her idea of holding a ball since she had brought it up earlier. Tiangao was the name of the Chen family’s manor that I had also been raised in as a child. These days the family resided in Kuí, and Tiangao served as more of a summer home that Mao stayed in when she visited the royal mansion of Bì. I did agree that it would be nice to visit Tiangao once the purification was over and done with, though; I hadn’t been there in a long while.

Mao managed to make it all the way to the outer entrance before she turned one more time to speak. “And promise me to think about the wedding dresses, okay? At least whether you’d prefer flowers or waves?”

“ _That_ I’m not going to promise,” I answered truthfully, trying to sound jovial but probably failing miserably. It was excruciatingly hard to feign humour about something that weighed on you so much that it felt as if something concrete was trying to crush your lungs.

I heard Mao scoff one more time before she closed the heavy doors behind her.


	31. Seiryuu-ou XI

I woke up, disoriented, from a dream that had just barely laid its tendrils off my consciousness before vanishing and leaving nothing but an uncomfortable, icky sort of feeling behind. By the time I opened my eyes, the dream in all its intensity had already escaped my memory; its aftertaste lingered on the tip of my tongue, just out of reach.

_That_ shit was freaking annoying.

When I headed over to the breakfast salon a few minutes later, still disoriented and my feet a bit wobbly as I descended the wooden stairs, the only other person I found in the room was Mihael. He was still an unusual sight in the breakfast salon; thanks to his new position as Kai’s placeholder guardian, he now got to stay in Cherrywood and enjoy some privileges of the royal family. And by privileges, I mean the food.

So there he was, sitting all alone at one of the round tables, a laptop in front of him along with a whole army of coffee cups (white with some leaf patterns). I managed to catch his attention by raising a hand and greeting him; he hastily closed the lid of the computer and nodded his head in a half-hearted bow.

“Good morning, Your Highness.” His voice was as friendly as ever, if only tired.

“Pfft, you know you can call me Takao.”

“I’m sorry, I wouldn’t dare to.”

Must have been Ralf rooting these ideas deep in his brain, that stiff-neck. I seated myself opposite Mihael, and while the kitchen staff rushed in bringing me the usual tray of breakfast stuff, I eyed the plethora of empty cups on the table.

“Been having a tough time acting as a substitute knight?” I asked him, nodding at the cups.

A light flush appeared on Mihael’s bronze skin, a bit sickly in hue under his light blue eyes. “N-no, not exactly, it’s not like that. I hardly even qualify to work in place of a royal knight; I’m sure Suzaku-ousama would fair just fine even without me around.”

“Eh, even if Kai doesn’t show it he probably appreciates it, having someone guard his back.” I wasn't fond of Ralf guarding _my_ back here at home, but not having anyone familiar around in a foreign country would have been intimidating even to me.

Mihael said nothing, his eyes revealing that he didn't believe me much. I hadn’t actually had the chance to talk to him in private in the course of the last two weeks with so much stuff happening all the time, and as I gulped down my morning tea and was beginning to feel like an actual human being again, I found the courage to ask him:

“Besides, wasn’t Kai’s knight already substituted with a squire when he came here? Did you know who that guy was?”

It had been bothering me ever since, Ralf’s notion that Claude had reacted to seeing Mihael and vice versa back when Kai arrived here. Mihael definitely tensed up at my question, his jaw clenched and eyes widened.

“Uhm,” he stuttered, “I did recognise him, yes. I'd seen him during my training.”

“So he’s from the East?”

“I, uh, I'm not sure. Probably not.” Mihael quickly went for his next cup of coffee and zipped his mouth after this roundabout answer. Having coffee with breakfast instead of tea was a bit unusual; I only knew coffee as something adults drank when they wanted to keep themselves from falling asleep. Mihael was just barely an adult, though, being only a couple years older than me.

“Okay.” So they did know each other from before, nothing suspicious about that, given that both were royal squires. I would have wanted to ask more about this squire training thing and why he was looking so distressed, but that was when Ralf entered the salon and scattered my thoughts all over the place.

“Good morning, Your Highness,” he announced like some police officer reporting for duty. “There was something for you in the mail.”

“Oh? Gimme!” I reached out a hand.

Ralf presented a small, white envelope. It had been stamped and shut with the turtle-shaped seal of the North, which I immediately recognised by now.

The envelope contained a postcard from Max, one of those really tourist-like ones that every souvenir shop had. It had “the Mansion of Okkusu” written in fancy cursive on top of a couple different photos that had been placed in a grid next to each other. The photos showed snowy scenes of fields, and some lake scenery, and the hairiest cows I’d ever seen, everything under the black Northern sky that rather gave me the creeps. The pictures alone almost made my teeth clatter from an intense flashback of the cold of the North, something I didn't miss at all.

I turned the card around to read the hand-written message on its backside. It had been written in ink, a bit smudged here and there.

_“Hi, Takao and Kai! I’ve never had the chance to send a postcard to anyone, so I wanted to try it!_

_Greetings from Celes Farmlands, not too far away from the Eastern border actually. The sky is even a little blue in that direction. We’re staying at the ranch of the Anderson family. It's been pretty crazy here, I'll tell you all about it later._

_I underestimated how little space there is on this thing. See you soon, hopefully!”_

The text was followed by Max’s signature and some messy star-shaped doodles.

“What’s that?” asked Mihael curiously, eyeing the card over the table.

“A card from Max – I mean, Genbu-ou.”

“The king? You’re in such close relations with him as well?”

“I am with all of them – well, if you can say that about Kai. I guess he’s... work in progress.”

“Even the Byakko-ou?” Mihael asked with an incredulous tinge in his voice, his bushy eyebrows raised. “Are you pen pals with Byakko-ousama, too?”

I opened my mouth and let my eyes sail in Ralf’s direction. He was just staring in front of him with a stern but ultimately blank expression, as usual, his hands behind his back. Well, maybe he didn’t care, and it seemed unlikely that anything I said here could harm Rei in any way. But I knew he wanted our friendship to be super top secret.

“Yeah, something like that,” I said with a shrug and decided that it was time to steer the topic elsewhere before Mihael asked more, just in case. “Where’s Kai? Is he done with breakfast?”

“Yes. He went to the fencing hall earlier. Perhaps he’s already planning a revenge for yesterday.”

Mihael said it with a humorous smirk, but what he said wouldn’t have surprised me at all if it were true. Kai didn’t seem like the good loser type to me – no noble probably was, honestly. That's the way we were, proud and self-important and bad at losing.

“Speaking of yesterday, is the garden gonna be okay?” I then asked. “And the rest of the town?” I eyed Mihael and Ralf both for answers, and both also looked equally clueless in response.

“The full damage hasn’t been assessed yet,” said Ralf, “but restoration work will most likely continue until Summermoon.”

“The meteorological institute is looking into the weather phenomenon, too,” added Mihael (earning a sour glance from Ralf, who probably thought that Mihael was one-upping him with his trivia). “Luckily only the Tsuno area was affected by the storm. Wind of that caliber would surely have caused more destruction elsewhere.”

Lucky or not, as I made my way to the fencing hall some moments later, I mulled over my uncomfortable premonition that it had all somehow been my fault, with what Kai had said yesterday and my dream about Seiryuu trying to tell me about something – maybe warn me about this. But I had no magic nor command over Seiryuu, I couldn't even understand its language, so it was all totally nonsensical to me. There literally was no way I somehow caused that without any powers of my own. Maybe if I told Max about it, he’d be able to tell me something, being an expert on magic and the holy beasts and all... If only he wasn’t out of reach right now.

I discovered Kai exploring the warehouse where all the fencing equipment was stored. He was by the long row of swords lined up next to the wall, measuring one with his hands, a thinner and longer bamboo sword that was a different model from the ones we used in our match.

“Hey, what’s up?” I said as I walked over; he gave a little start at my voice, apparently not having noticed me approaching. “Admiring our sword collection?”

“This is the kind I used to practise with,” Kai said, moving his hand along the long bamboo shaft. “If I had one of these, I’d have beaten you for sure.”

“Ha! ‘That so?” His tone was so calm and matter-of-fact, it drove me crazy. The bigger fencing swords were basically adult-sized, meant for more demanding combat. I pointed at the one he was holding. “That’s my brother’s old one – he preferred the thin model, whatever those were called again. Hitoshi was tall for his age, I guess. Back then, I mean.” I cringed at myself for talking about him in past tense.

Kai was nowhere near as tall as Hitoshi the way I remembered him, though. Or perhaps I had only perceived him as exceptionally tall when I was so much shorter myself. It was surprisingly difficult to try and bring a fresh memory of Hitoshi to mind; this, too, made me cringe internally.

But Kai definitely was handling the long sword with familiar ease.

“I didn’t know fencing was done outside the East,” I then said to keep the conversation going. “It’s like our national sport. We’ve got big tournaments every year. Do you have those in the South?”

He put the sword down, back to its own slot against the wall.

“It’s just a type of combat sports,” he said. “Never heard of tournaments.”

“Can you do other types too?”

“Of course.”

“Like archery? We have an archery hall in another building here.”

“Sure.”

“What about sword fighting?” My heart did a little skip of excitement as I asked.

“That too. What're you getting at with this interrogation?” Kai had begun scowling at me, probably getting tired of my snooping. But I couldn’t help it – there was so much I wanted to know! It was Kai’s fault for acting so secretive about himself and the South; the most infuriating thing about it was that I didn’t think he realised that he _was_ being secretive. He just wasn't used to talking about himself.

“I really want to learn sword fighting myself, but Gramps says I have to wait till I’m an adult. But, I was thinking, if I could have you as a training partner, maybe Gramps would let me try it while you’re still here.”

Kai scoffed at my suggestion. “So I’d be babysitting a total greenie?” But he then added, crossing his arms across his chest like he often did, with something akin to a smirk on his face: “Well, whatever, since I’m already stuck with you anyway.”

I didn’t like the patronising tone, but seeing him make any face that wasn’t just disregard or anger toward me was a glimmer of hope to me. He actually acknowledged my existence. I’d earned his interest by beating him in fencing, maybe even dented his pride a little.

“If I had any say in the matter, I wouldn’t be a greenie anymore,” I pointed out, annoyed. But as soon as these words had left my mouth, a new thought suddenly occurred to me, so very tempting and fresh. What _did_ I actually need Gramps’ permission for if I had Kai with me who, judging by his words, was a totally seasoned sword-user? If he was so good, couldn’t he just teach me?

“Hey, I got an idea. I wanna show you something.”

Cherrywood had no swordplay practice hall for all I knew, but it sure did have a place with a bunch of swords: the weapon chamber on the basement floor. I took Kai back to the main castle building and led him down the old staircase, all the way down to the musky, dungeon-like underground corridors and the door bolted shut with a thick metal bar. The chamber had probably once been locked away more tightly and still had a whole row of indentations where old locks used to grace the door, but now I could simply lift the bar aside with relative ease and barge right in. I’d never come across anybody else there, so the place appeared completely forgotten overall.

“Impressive, right?” I boasted as I stood before the extensive array of weaponry that adorned each side of the chamber, hands defiantly on my hips. With all the idle time I’d spent in the chamber, the collection had become familiar to me by now: swords, spears, naginatas, axes, hammers, maces, knives of all imaginable sizes, old, bulky bows no longer in use, slings, chains – and lastly a small collection of selected shields, each of which was decorated by the emblem of the seven mansions, as I recognised by now thanks to my studies.

Kai examined the walls with obvious interest but, as far as I could tell, not looking as awestruck as I had hoped to see him.

“Pretty decent,” he said after a while.

Oh, that tone, it aggravated me  _so_  much. Hiding my disappointment, I strode over to the sword stands where the swords all rested on top of each other in neat vertical rows of three.

“What do you think of these? You think you could teach me how to use one?”

Kai followed, scanning the swords with his eyes. Now a tiny crevice appeared between his brows. He picked one of the top-most swords and measured it with his hands, running his fingers across the black-and-red sheath.

“This is different from my sword. I’ve never seen curved ones like this before.”

“Really?” Apart from fencing swords, these were the only ones I was familiar with. (The slightly befuddled tone in Kai’s voice was so satisfying, though.)

Kai carefully unsheathed the sword and pointed it away from me, giving it a subtle swing, weighing his grip on it. For someone who supposedly had never even seen such a sword before, he handled it amazingly well, I had to admit.

“Doesn’t feel half bad. It’s really lightweight. Only the bottom side of the blade seems sharpened, though. How strange. It’s like a kitchen knife.”

Kai was clearly in his element with a weapon in hand; he could as well have been born with the sword in his hand like that. And he had – how should I put it – such a good form as he stood there measuring the sword with both his eyes and the arm holding it. It came so naturally to him.

_Right_ , that’s when I remembered that he was the – what was it again, supreme commander of the Southern army? Something like that. What did it actually mean, though, being a supreme commander? Did he have real knowledge of warfare or so? Had he led an actual army sometime? I couldn’t imagine it; he was hardly any older than me.

On the other hand, I _could_ imagine it as I watched him now, aggravatingly handsome while yielding one of our swords. It occurred to me for the first time now that his arms, visible from the loose sleeves of his robes, were pretty damn muscular. No wonder they'd packed some insane punch during the fencing match.

While I was preoccupied with my thoughts, Kai had set his eyes on something else. He sheathed the sword again and put it back in its place in the stand.

“And what’s that?” he then asked and turned to look back in the direction he’d been pointing the tip of the sword at. I trailed his gaze to the far end of the chamber where Ryuushinken’s lone upright stand rested, looking downright abandoned in the darkness.

“Oh, that’s our heirloom sword. But there’s no point in wasting your time on that one – it’s only usable to the real Seiryuu-ou, otherwise it’s just stuck there.”

“Real Seiryuu-ou?” Kai repeated and looked at me. “That’s not you?”

“No! It’s my dad somewhere out there... probably.”

I followed him as he trod over to the stand, and now that I looked at Ryuushinken, it did have a straight shaft rather than a softly curved one like the sword Kai had tried. Its hilt was shaped differently, too, with a wide, sturdy crossguard and a round pommel at the end.

“And that’s...” Kai extended his arm, fingers pointing at the round, blue stone embedded in the hilt.

“Yeah, the gemstone of Seiryuu. It doesn't let anyone but the real king to use the sword. The whole thing's a magic item and useless otherwise.”

Kai said nothing in response anymore, only eyed the sword for a good long while without a word. Maybe he had an eye for swords that I didn’t – as in for swords as artefacts, in the aesthetic way, not just something to use in fencing or swordplay.

It had been a dumb idea to imagine he could teach me sword fighting, though, I now realised. Ralf would never, ever approve of it, given his general distrust toward Kai, and I didn't need any more lies between me and Gramps either.

I made my way to the door, watched Kai tear his eyes off the far back of the chamber and finally follow me.

“I heard Max carries Genbu’s stone around his neck,” I said as we were back in the stairs. “Do you have something like that for Suzaku too?”

“Nah,” Kai only said, not exactly showing interest in discussing it.

Sure enough, we were picked up by Ralf who’d already been looking for me as we emerged back to the main entrance hall. “I have your schedule for the day, Your Highness.”

Another interview for some media outlet; another dinner party with some nobles, this time in the neighbouring town of Hirachi... and lessons on economy and the history of Tsuno’s waterworks. I hadn’t been to Hirachi before, like I hadn’t really been much anywhere, so that was fairly exciting. All I really knew about the place was that it wasn’t a particularly big city and was built in the traditional Eastern fashion like Tsuno. There were only two big cities in the royal mansion that could be said to bear the status of a modern metropolis: Kurayagura and Hashira. I’d never been to a “modern city” before, though, so I couldn’t really imagine one. All I knew was that they were newer establishments and didn’t build everything out of wood anymore, and that they housed a lot more people because they stacked impossible amounts of apartments on top of each other. I had seen photos, of course, but they didn’t really show anything but rows and rows of those tower-like buildings, all identical without any identity of their own. It was weird.

And weird was also how small Tsuno had started feeling to me in the past two moons, when until now it had been my entire world.


	32. Byakko-ou XI

One more week. Just one more week until the purification period was over. One more dull, repetitive week of having nothing to do but wait for time to pass by.

Have green tea, do some calligraphy, have green tea, read a book, have green tea, watch the horizon for a while, have green tea, take a bath, eat, meditate, sleep.

Monday. The elders and attending officers discussed my first “public post-purification appearance” as if I wasn’t in the room to hear all of it. It had been scheduled for the following Monday, exactly one week ahead, and would take place in the town hall of Tianguan. I’d be presented to the media like a zoo animal that has finally crawled out of the cave it’s been sleeping in for weeks. “Look! He’s still alive! Quick, take some pictures!” Then I would be dragged around to attend all these completely irrelevant events that I didn’t care about and where I was designated to sit around like a puppet without saying or doing a thing. A truly thrilling return to society.

Rai wasn’t even present in the council, to my dismay, so I didn’t get a chance to discuss anything with him.

Tuesday. No sign of Max coming back yet. I hardly saw Olivier around, either; he was busy with something, I had no idea what. At least with baking macarons, I deduced, as more and more were served with evening tea each day. They were definitely Olivier’s signature macarons, but Olivier himself wasn’t present to share them. What was he even doing? Baking to relieve stress?

Takao called me again to gush about Kai. I definitely called it “gushing”.

Wednesday. I summoned all my courage to sneak into the disc section of the palace library. I wasn’t entirely sure if the library was being monitored through security cameras or such or not, but I sure hoped it wasn't; I didn’t want anybody to see me hide the documentary series of Western martial arts into the folds of my robes (it was getting a bit cramped, with the disc player also there; I usually carried the talkpad around in my robes as well to keep it hidden, but I’d left it in my room this time). Then I walked briskly out of the library, holding my head high and trying to move fast while also looking as innocent as possible (not like the guards at the doors even looked at me; they bowed deep whenever I walked by). Taking the discs to my own quarters felt too risky, so I began watching them in the tower late at night; I hid them under a floorboard during the day. All this caution just because I wasn't allowed to hold onto any electronic devices.

Thursday. An envelope arrived in the mail, it was from Max. I read the short message on it probably a hundred times over the course of the day. Then I hid it under the talkpad’s lid.

Friday. I found it, a variation of martial arts that I absolutely wanted to learn: the art of wielding a Qiang spear. It was mesmerizing; the long metallic pole gave its wielder such a graceful yet powerful form. I was stunned. The idea of arts that included wielding a weapon had been appealing to me for a while already, but a spear hadn’t occurred to me until I saw it in action on one of the documentaries I’d been watching. It was a beautiful long-range weapon; wielding one looked like an elaborate dance that required absolute precision, balance, strength and agility. A fine grasp on all of those traits would surely help me with mastering my own magic as well.

The narrator mentioned that this form of martial arts had been invented by one of the past Byakko-ous. _Maybe I should look this ancestor of mine up in the library later,_ I thought. Had it been common for the past kings to know martial arts? Embarrassingly enough, I really hadn’t studied my forefathers much; I’d never had much interest in any blood relatives because I was brought up by the Chen family and didn’t know anything about my biological parents.

Speaking of the Chens, I realised that Mao hadn’t come over this week. She always dropped by at some point, but not this time. I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed about it or not.

Saturday. Still no sign of Max coming back. I was told that my first public appearance had been postponed from next Monday to Wednesday. Takao called me to vent about Ralf’s attitude toward that poor squire of his whom he’d caught sneaking around at night. I’d been doing a good amount of sneaking around at night myself these days, so I couldn’t blame the insomniac squire.

On the twenty-eighth day of Sowmoon, my purification was finally over.

The rite was formally ended with a cleansing of a more literal sort: bathing in the holy water of the temple of Byakko, a hexagon-shaped hall connected to Bixiùwu that nobody but I (and the servants in charge of cleaning the place, I would assume) was allowed to enter. It was a surprisingly modest-looking building, at least in comparison to the rest of Tiger Maple, its structure built entirely of carved white stone without any unnecessary fineries made of gold or bronze or any other metal. The stone had been decorated with carvings of typical Western symbols, all climbing up the walls and stone pillars that stood against the arched ceiling. The temple wasn’t particularly big in area – it was actually rather small, for a temple of such presumed importance – most of which was occupied by a similarly hexagon-shaped pool in the middle. On the opposite side from the entrance was an altar, a cupboard-like construction of white stone and gold on top of a golden platform, with a painted icon of Byakko in the centre. The icon was surrounded by white candles and lily flowers (possibly fake, as it seemed impractical to bring fresh flowers to a place like this) and a replica of the royal crown at the top. The crown was a metallic wreath of gold, weaved of what looked like razor-sharp petals, with white and red jewels embedded all around it and four heavy tassels hanging on the sides, two on each side. The only real difference between the replica and the true crown was that this version had the gemstone of Byakko embedded on it, right in the middle. I had no idea why the gem was embedded in the replica rather than the real deal, but this was where the gem had always been stored, for all I knew; even I wasn’t allowed to touch the replica crown, let alone wear it. Perhaps the gem was here because it quite literally was never moved – I’d be wearing the real crown in a few moons’ time, without the gemstone. It had me wondering if this wasn't actually the true crown, while the one I was to wear was the replica, less valuable and therefore safe to move around.

The crown was by far the gaudiest item in the entire temple; it was otherwise shrouded in what Olivier would probably have called _austere beauty_ or something like that.

The cleansing ritual didn’t consist of much. I had performed something similar many times before. There were different levels to the purification rite, the one following leaving the country entirely being the most severe one; setting foot outside Tiger Maple, Tianguan or the royal mansion but staying within the borders of the West required smaller rituals; but I always had to wash myself all the same. When I was younger, I really did believe in Tiger Maple’s sacred purity and that it was necessary for me to be purified of all the spiritual filth every now and then. I had had no reason to doubt it and hence had been very punctual with all the rituals involved. I had even feared the impurities of the outside world at some point.

And now – well, perhaps a tiny crumb of that conditioned belief still remained in some nook of my soul, but first of all, I understood that the water led to the temple wasn’t holy at all but actually from the garden pond outside my bedroom, the water of which came from the mountain spring, which led to a river _outside_ the royal mansion, which I now knew to actually be connected to as far as the North; secondly, after reading the book on the former Seiryuu-ou that described his travels around the world during his reign without any word about some arbitrary concern over impurities... Simply put, it was rather hard for me to believe anymore that this was anything but another embodiment of the religious humbug of my country.

Besides, this bathing ritual was the same as fasting: there was actually nobody there to watch if I did what I was supposed to. The correct procedure for spiritual cleansing comprised washing myself in the correct order from head to feet and paying my respects to Byakko before and after the ritual. I did do the latter just in case Byakko alone knew of it somewhere out there; I wanted to make a good impression on the holy beast, if nobody else. The former... well, close enough, but the water was way too cold for any reasonable person to bathe in, let alone a king; I didn’t feel very holy while in the pool, wrapping my shivering arms around myself as my skin turned to goose flesh, wishing I was in my bedroom eating the leftovers of the snacks hidden under the cushions instead. Had the water always been this cold? I remembered it having been cool before, but not unbearable like this.

After the cleansing I was dried, oiled and dolled up and dressed in my usual formal robes of black, red and white (which, compared to the purification robes, now felt like wearing the fur coat of some hairy animal, heavy and sultry on my damp skin; it also took the servants fifteen minutes to put the entire attire on me, which was another aspect I hadn't been missing). My hair was done into a braid that, along with the corresponding jewellery, also felt uncomfortably heavy and tight compared to the loose ponytail I was already used to. My face and nails were painted, even my eyebrows were polished.

All this extensive grooming was followed by a more ceremonial purification ritual performed by Master Tao, one of the Elders, who was so short that I had to kneel down for him to bless me. The other Elders and some officers and nobles were present to follow the ceremony, but no Rai nor Olivier anywhere in sight; Olivier was represented by his page. I felt almost lonely, honestly, without Olivier’s presence by my side.

They’d brought a whole vaulting parade to the palace grounds just to celebrate the end of my purification. It took about an hour, just watching this unnecessarily gaudy show unfold in front of me and the small company of Elders and guards that accompanied me, none of whom radiated any sort of enjoyment for being there. I’d never liked these sorts of things, either; I would have preferred to do something over sitting on a fancy seat watching others do whatever in front of me. Watching all these acrobatic people dance on their steeds only steered my thoughts to the spear-wielding techniques, and I spent a good chunk of that hour daydreaming, completetly distracted. I was aware that this was the polar opposite of most nobles; all they ever did was attend cultural events or each others' tea parties. If Olivier had been there, I’d surely have received a steady stream of commentary from him. But his page, who stood in complete silence behind me throughout the entire thing, seemed about as interested as I was.

And then it was time for the feast in the largest dining hall of all Tiger Maple. There was so much food, it would have fed an entire town; and I, having fasted the past two moons with very little to eat during daytime, could already tell that I was about to break my stomach and make myself sick by eating too much. Not only was it hard to resist the temptation to eat a bit of everything, that's what I was expected to do.

The purification period was finally over. I was free to leave the royal palace again.

And yet, by Sunday evening, I didn’t feel any particular joy as I stood alone in my favourite tower again, watching the distant lights of the city through the thin drizzle coming down from the dark sky. The chill, melancholy grey of the scenery before me seemed to reach all the way down to my own heart and leave it cold and uncaring. The purification might have been over, but I didn't feel any different inside.

I reached for the talkpad under my robes and lifted its lid without turning the device on. I took out the polaroid photo that had arrived in the same envelope with the postcard earlier, a picture of Max smiling with his arms around the neck of a horse as white as the snowy field in the background.

_Where are you right now, what are you thinking about?_ I wondered. _I wish I knew._


End file.
